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Okinawa Officials Demand Reduction of US Forces
Local government representatives from Okinawa called on the Japanese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday to make efforts to reduce the size of US military forces in Japan's southernmost island prefecture and relocate some drills elsewhere, Kyodo News reported.
Nine people representing a prefecture-wide council concerning US base-related issues met with Senior Vice Foreign Minister Shigeo Uetake and also asked the ministry to conduct a radical review of the bilateral Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) on the management of US military bases in Japan, the report quoted a Foreign Ministry official as saying.
Calls are growing in Okinawa to revise the SOFA to facilitate the transfer of custody to the Japanese authorities of U.S. soldiers suspected of committing crimes in Japan.
Under the accord, the U.S. military is not required to hand over suspects before they are indicted. But following the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawa girl by three U.S. servicemen in 1995, Washington agreed to give "sympathetic consideration" to the pre- indictment transfer of suspects in serious crimes such as murder and rape.
Okinawa officials, however, were enraged when it took four days for the United States to decide to hand over an airman who allegedly raped an Okinawa woman in late June and heightened their calls for a revision of the SOFA.
The council also called for the protection of local people's living conditions and the natural environment in the prefecture.
It was the first time that the group urged that U.S. Marine Corps' drills be moved outside Okinawa and the forces in the prefecture be reduced in number, the report said.
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