Crackdown on U.S. military crime

[thomas]

Japan calls for crackdown on U.S. military crime

[...] Residents of Okinawa have long resented what they see as their unfair burden in hosting 26,000 of the 48,000 U.S. military personnel in the country as part of the U.S.-Japan security alliance, a pillar of Tokyo's postwar foreign policy.

Incidents involving the U.S. military, including the notorious 1995 rape of a 12-year-old Japanese girl by three servicemen, have fanned the resentment and prompted calls to shift the troops elsewhere in Japan or reduce their number, which the central government -- anxious to avoid ruffling bilateral ties -- is in general keen to avoid.

In March this year, U.S. airman Timothy Woodland was found guilty of raping a Japanese woman in June 2001 and sentenced to 32 months in a Japanese jail. [...]

=> http://asia.reuters.com/news_article...toryID=1847238