"only takes 2 hours to drive across from tip to tail"
Keep in mind that it's an island, so the highway speed limits range from walking speed to a brisk jog. I lived in Okinawa for a few years as a kid in the 90s, and even paying for the Express Way at the time only got you up to the mainland's casual road (not freeway) speeds.
There's some insane NIMBYism with mainlanders against the Okinawans as well.
The mainlanders know the problems and concerns the Okinawans face and yet they don't want to host the US bases.
There were some politicians that ran with campaign promises that they'll relocate some US personnel to the mainland but either walked back or was simply voted out because the mainlanders want to shove all the responsibility to Okinawans.
Why does the US not simply instill discipline in its troops and come down hard on lapses of it? A soldier rapes a local? Dishonorable discharge, charge them backpay, and turn them over to the local government for more punishment.
The evening of September 4, 1995, three US servicemen... 12 year old Okinawan girl... Navy Seaman Marcus Gill and Marine Pfc. Rodrico Harp each received sentences of 7 years in prison, while Marine Pfc. Kendrick Ledet was sentenced to 6 1/2 years... all were released in 2003.
The fact that you can see that they do the spread-out american suburban style housing on the base that takes up so much room is crazy when they can't fit everybody on base so they have to go out and take housing from the already densely packed okinawan's.
The first documented sexual assault of an Okinawan woman by a U.S. serviceman dates back to 1854, involving a drunken Marine from the USS Lexington during Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s expedition to Japan.
The incident directly led to a clause in the Ryūkyū–U.S. Treaty of Amity banning Americans from committing violence against Ryukyuan women.
So...the Okinawa–U.S. military tension kinda started at first contact.
This was basically Hawaii before statehood: a Pacific island kingdom, fought over and conquered by faraway superpowers because of its strategic location, its indigenous culture in danger of being crowded out by American (and Japanese) influence.
my wife, who is a japanese native, and her friends have told me they avoid Okinawa due to the SA that occurs there around the bases which never get prosecuted.
I'm sure this is just about the least flattering comparison possible, but the land used for American suburbia being returned to Okinawa and increasing in economic impact 32 fold is mind blowing.
It also doesnt help that rents are so expensive for locals. The mininum wage in okinawa is like $5 an hour. Whereas the military has a housing budget of roughly $1000 a month so all the landlords obviously price everything for miltary rathe than locals
There is a list of places U.S. military personnel are prohibited from going to. In Tokyo, Osaka and other cities in Japan, there is one or two places per city. In Okinawa, the list is several pages long. One thing you have to know is that if something stupid was done, a U.S. Marine probably did it.
I was never stationed on Okinawa but the base that I was stationed at, MCAS Iwakuni on mainland Japan was under the same chain of command that Okinawa was. Every few weeks, our liberty got restricted because some Marine on Okinawa got drunk and did something ridiculous to the locals.
As a young Marine stationed at Camp Hanson, back in the day, the Okinawans used to protest when we fired the 155 mm howitzer up into the mountains on a gunnery range we had there. The rounds would go over several villages before they would explode in the mountains. As a 19-year-old, I didn’t understand what the big deal was, but now I think, yeah probably not cool.
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Keep in mind that it's an island, so the highway speed limits range from walking speed to a brisk jog. I lived in Okinawa for a few years as a kid in the 90s, and even paying for the Express Way at the time only got you up to the mainland's casual road (not freeway) speeds.
The mainlanders know the problems and concerns the Okinawans face and yet they don't want to host the US bases.
There were some politicians that ran with campaign promises that they'll relocate some US personnel to the mainland but either walked back or was simply voted out because the mainlanders want to shove all the responsibility to Okinawans.
This is information from an interview with his father
The first documented sexual assault of an Okinawan woman by a U.S. serviceman dates back to 1854, involving a drunken Marine from the USS Lexington during Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s expedition to Japan.
The incident directly led to a clause in the Ryūkyū–U.S. Treaty of Amity banning Americans from committing violence against Ryukyuan women.
So...the Okinawa–U.S. military tension kinda started at first contact.