Outposts of Violence: Sixty Years of Women's Activism Against US Military Bases
Suzuyo Takazato is co-founder of the activist group Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence.
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In August of 2006, Okinawans were shocked and saddened to receive the news that Kendrick Ledet, a former US Marine, had killed himself after raping and killing a female college student in Georgia. Kendrick was one of three servicemen who had been convicted in Okinawa for gang-raping a 12-year-old girl in 1995.
In October of 2005, Marine Major Michael Brown was arrested in West Virginia on the charge of kidnapping a Vietnamese-American high school student. While stationed in Okinawa in 2002, Brown had been accused of attempted sexual assault on a Filipino woman who worked on his base. After an unusually lengthy trial, with the full legal support of the US military, he was finally convicted -- but his sentence was suspended and he was returned to the US.
The US military has been stationed in Okinawa since 1945, occupying almost 20% of the main island where 1.36 million people live. In the fierce "Battle of Okinawa" at the end of WWII, 25% of the population died. When Okinawans who had been displaced by the battle returned after the war, they found their lands taken by the US military.
During the Korean War in the 1950s, Okinawa functioned as an outpost. Women working in bars around the bases faced brutal violence, rape, and murder by soldiers. During the Vietnam War, when all US soldiers finished their last training in Okinawa before deployment in Vietnam, many women, especially those in the sex industry, were raped and killed. Many who were assaulted were deeply traumatized and severely suffer to this day.
US soldiers' sexual crimes know no national boundaries. On November 1, 2005, a woman was raped by a US Marine while three others looked on. The four Marines belonged to a unit stationed in Okinawa, but were at Subic Bay participating in a joint "war-on-terror" exercise with the Philippines military. On December 4, 2006, only one of them, Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith, was convicted in Philippines court, while the others were acquitted and immediately returned to Okinawa. Smith may face 20 to 40 years of imprisonment, though he has since been returned to US custody and many doubt that he will serve his sentence.
In a similar case in Okinawa in June 2001, the sentence was only three years, demonstrating a clear contrast between the criminal justice systems of Japan and the Philippines regarding sexual crimes. In fact, the US government has agreed to turn suspects over to Japanese authorities in cases of rape because of the light sentences for sexual crimes in Japan.
These cases show only a tiny fraction of sexual crimes committed by US military personnel against women in Okinawa, the Philippines, and Korea, where US military bases are located. When I learned about Michael Brown's case in the US, I wondered how many more more crimes he may have committed in Okinawa. In both the Japan and the US, he deliberately targeted women/girls in socially vulnerable positions.
Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence, a women's peace and human rights organization in Okinawa, has learned from our 60 years of experience of living in close proximity to the US military that violence committed by US soldiers is a product of institutionalized violence of the military and its training, US racism against the Asians in host countries, and the patriarchal social structure of host countries. We have joined together with other activists in Asia and around the world to protest this violence in every country. We strongly oppose the current plan of relocating 8000 Marines from Okinawa to the similarly oppressed island of Guam. It can only mean an increase of violence for the Chamorro nation of Guam, and especially for its women. We are determined to speak out in solidarity with the people of Guam, and with people everywhere, against the strengthening of US militarism through the proliferation of its miltary bases.
