The Sergeant Timothy Woodland Case

 

Around 2:30 AM, June 29, 2001, in a parking lot within the so-called American Village entertainment and shopping plaza in the town of Chatan, just outside Kadena Air Force Base, several off-duty servicemen observed Air Force Staff Sergeant Timothy Woodland, 24-years-old, of the 353rd Operational Support Squadron at Kadena with his pants down to his knees having sex with a 20-year-old Okinawan woman on the hood of a car. Several of them later testified that they heard the woman yell ‘No! Stop!’ although they said they thought she was saying no to other men standing around. Marine Lance Corporal Jermaine Oliphant said in court that he saw Woodland rape the woman as she struggled to get away. The defense contended that Oliphant said this because he was a Marine and the Air Force sergeant was his rival. When Woodland finished, he fled the scene in a car with a military license plate.17

 

On July 2, following a complaint by the woman, the Japanese police issued a warrant for Woodland’s arrest on suspicion of rape and sodomy. After vacillating for four days, on July 6, the American authorities turned him over to the custody of the Japanese’”before prosecutors had obtained an indictment. It was only the second time the Americans had ever surrendered one of their men before indictment, and they were very reluctant to do so. But as Hiroshi Honma, professor of international law at Hosei University, observes, ‘If the local community’s negative reaction is strong, they [the U.S. military] will turn over suspects. And, if not, they won’t turn over the suspects.’18

 

The local and national Japanese communities reacted strongly to this incident. Numerous groups in Okinawa denounced the licentiousness and lack of discipline of the American troops, and in Tokyo, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, irritated over the four-day delay in turning over Woodland, voted unanimously for a revision of the SOFA. It said that the case itself and the U.S. military’s response ‘gave great  concern and shock to the people of Okinawa, and the people of Japan are feeling indignation.’ In response, chief cabinet secretary Yasuo Fukuda said that Japan would not seek a revision of the SOFA but would instead ask for a faster, less contentious application of the existing agreement.19 The American Embassy had informed Fukuda that the United States was adamantly opposed to opening up the whole SOFA for revision.

 

The American view was that in turning Woodland over to the Japanese they were violating his human rights, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said that he was afraid of setting a precedent. Thom Shanker of the New York Times reported, ‘One Pentagon official said the United States was concerned that if Sergeant Woodland were transferred to the local authorities before being indicted, he would have no guarantee of having a lawyer or even an interpreter with him during questioning, and that the authorities could conduct their questioning in any manner and for any length of time.’20

 

In fact, Woodland was interrogated by the police for thirty hours without eliciting a confession. He contended that the sex on the morning of June 29 was ‘consensual’ and pleaded not guilty to the charges. Some observed that Woodland was merely behaving like any suspect in an American court trying to sway a jury, but that he instead infuriated the Japanese court, where judges, not juries, try criminal suspects. Most Okinawans thought it highly unlikely that consensual sex would have taken place on the hood of a car with several other men looking on. But American soldiers did not agree. Several of them argued in print that the victim was merely an ‘Amejo’ (American girl) or a ‘night owl’ and that, as one put it, ‘Every Japanese girl I have dated or known as a friend has stated that she is intrigued by having sex in public.’ Another soldier referred to the victim as ‘a miniskirt-wearing little ‘yellow cab’ who couldn’t remember what her name was. . . . Most of these trashy tramps can’t think far enough ahead to order fries with their Big Mac.’ Even Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka blamed the victim for having been out so late, drinking in a bar frequented by American servicemen.21

 

Presiding Judge Soichi Hayashida was having none of this. On March 28, 2002, he found Woodland guilty, declaring that the ‘testimony offered by the victim is highly trustworthy,’ and sentenced Woodland to two years and eight months in prison.22 Okinawan residents welcomed the verdict but said the sentence was too light. The Okinawan Prefectural Assembly adopted a resolution seeking revision of the SOFA, demanding that the U.S. military should automatically hand over suspects upon request from the Japanese government. Woodland went to prison near Tokyo with the fifteen other American servicemen serving time in Japanese prisons. There the dispute over implementation of the SOFA rested until less than eight months later another serious rape case erupted in Okinawa’”and this time the Americans refused to turn over the suspect.

 

The Major Michael J. Brown Case

 

Major Brown is 41 years old, a nineteen-year veteran of the Marine Corps. In November 2002 he was attached to the headquarters of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Courtney, a large deployment in central Okinawa of some 4,400 Marines. It was his second tour of duty in the Ryukyus. Brown is a ‘mustang,’ that is an officer who came up from within the ranks. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1984 from his home in Menard, Texas, advanced to the rating of private first class, and was then selected to receive a university education at federal expense. He attended Texas A&M and was commissioned a second lieutenant on May 29, 1991. He was promoted regularly and achieved the rank of major on March 1, 2001. In 2002, Brown was living off base in the nearby community of Gushikawa with his American wife, Lisa, and two young children.

 

No one involved in his case can remember an officer being in trouble with the Okinawan police before, certainly not during the past decade. We know a good deal about his background, attitudes, and opinions concerning the honesty and competence of Japanese police and judges, Okinawans in general, the American ambassador to Japan Howard Baker, President George W. Bush, and others because of a web site he created’”’Free Major Brown,’ www.majorbrown.org/index.htm‘”which stores many relevant articles and documents as well as long, rambling diatribes of his from prison.

 

On November 1, 2002, upon completion of his day’s work, Brown went to the Camp Courtney officers club. It was karaoke night and Brown says he enjoys this activity. He spent the evening with fellow officers and their wives (not including his own wife), drinking, playing pool, and crooning into a microphone with recorded accompaniment. When the club closed at midnight he decided to walk to his home two miles away via an auxiliary rear gate to the base. When he discovered that the gate he had in mind was locked for the evening, he had to walk back to the main gate. He had also forgotten his coat at the club and was getting cold. He admits he was intoxicated.

 

According to his own account, as he was walking to the main gate of Camp Courtney around 1:00 AM on November 2, 2002, he was offered a ride home by Victoria Nakamine, a 40-year-old Filipina barmaid and cashier at the officers club. She is married to an Okinawan. What happened next is in dispute. Brown says that once they left Camp Courtney in her car they stopped on a quiet road and had a heated argument about the proper route to take. Both agree that he grabbed Nakamine’s cell phone from her, apparently in order to prevent her from calling for help, and threw it into the nearby Tengan River.

 

According to Brown, she was now infuriated with him and in order to get even walked back to the main gate and told the military police that he had twice tried to rape her. The MPs replied that since the incident occurred off base, they would have to call the Okinawan prefectural police. Gushikawa policemen came to the scene and took her complaint that Brown had molested her and tried to rip her clothes off. She said she’d fought him off and gotten out of the car but that when she returned to see if he had calmed down, he seized her phone and again tried to assault her. She claims she fought ferociously to fend off his attack. He then ran away to his home and she drove to the main gate of Camp Courtney to report him. Brown is ambiguous: in some accounts he says they just had a loud and unpleasant argument, in others he claims that Nakamine made sexual advances to him. He has repeatedly claimed that ‘I was seduced by the woman and when I would not go along with the seduction, she got angry and filed the complaint.’23 American guards at the main gate claim that Nakamine did not appear disheveled and was fully dressed. On the other hand, Richard DeWald, the American civilian manager of the officers club and Nakamine’s boss, corroborates her version of events. He identified Brown to the police as the person Nakamine gave a ride to, since she did not know his name.

 

Proceeding cautiously, the police delayed for a month before acting on Nakamine’s complaint. Finally, on December 3, 2002, the Naha District Court issued a warrant for Brown’s arrest on a charge of attempted rape and destroying private property (the cell phone).24 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo  asked the Marine Corps to turn him over. After delaying for two days, the U.S. Embassy curtly announced that it had decided to retain custody of Major Brown, declaring ‘The government of the United States has concluded that the circumstances of this case as presented by the government of Japan do not warrant departure from the standard practice as agreed between the United States and Japan.’25 The Okinawan press has speculated that the Americans did not consider a failed rape a ‘heinous crime.’ This U.S. intransigence did not go down well with anyone except perhaps members of the Marine Corps.

 

On December 6, a large number of police raided Brown’s home and office and carried off anything that looked promising, in the process frightening his wife and children.26 Prime Minister Koizumi said that the U.S.’s refusal was all right with him, but his foreign minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, was less accommodating. She asserted that Japan would have to get a clarification of what was included under the 1995 ‘sympathetic consideration’ agreement and that the case was frustrating because even under a flexible administration of the old SOFA, the United States retained all discretion to cooperate or not to cooperate.27 Okinawa governor Inamine declared that ‘Yet more trouble was caused by a U.S. serviceman, despite our repeated requests to the U.S. military for disciplinary and preventive efforts. . . . It is a heinous crime infringing upon the human rights of a woman, and it is unforgivable in that it was committed by a serviceman who is required to act as a leader. It is extremely regrettable and causes me to feel strong indignation.’ The Okinawa prefectural assembly unanimously adopted a protest resolution demanding that the Americans hand over Brown. Most significantly, a newly formed liaison group of all fourteen governors of prefectures in which American bases are located urged the Liberal Democratic Party ‘to secure a true Japan-U.S. partnership through a revised Status of Forces Agreement.’28

    

Finally, on December 19, 2002, Naha prosecutors indicted Brown and, in strict accordance with the SOFA, the U.S. handed him over the same day.29  From that point on Brown, with the help of his family, waged an unprecedented campaign of legal maneuvers and inflammatory publicity charging, among other things, that the Japanese criminal justice system is unfair and that American officials were willing to see him railroaded in order to keep their bases in Japan and obtain Japanese cooperation for George Bush’s pending invasion of Iraq.

 

One of Brown’s first acts was to obtain an American lawyer, Victor Kelley of the National Military Justice Group, who on March 7, 2003, filed a petition in federal court in Washington DC for an emergency writ of habeas corpus. Kelley argued that in turning over Brown to the Japanese the U.S. government violated his Constitutional rights as an American citizen ‘to be free from compulsory incrimination, the right to the effective assistance of counsel, and the right to a reasonable bail.’ He added, ‘[In Japan,] due process has no meaning. The Japanese ‘conviction’ rate is nearly 100 percent. To be indicted is to be convicted. The presumption of innocence is a mockery of justice. Almost without exception, all are convicted; no one goes free.’ The relief requested was to ‘order the Respondent [i.e., the United States of America] to . . . request the Government of Japan to give ‘sympathetic consideration’ [and] waive its right to exercise primary jurisdiction in this matter’ and ‘order the Respondent to exercise primary jurisdiction in this case.’ This is a perfect example of the logic of extraterritoriality as it was enunciated in China 150 years ago. Needless to say, the Washington court did not grant the writ but simply by filing it, Brown was building up a case.30

 

Brown also sought to apply political pressure. He obtained the support of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) and of his representative, Congressman Lamar Smith, Republican of the Texas 21st District. Both of them informed the secretary of defense of their deep concern that Brown was not being treated fairly. Brown also raised the political stakes by urging his friends and fellow Marines to write to their elected representatives, suggesting that they say, ‘It is way past time for President Bush to intervene and no longer allow the Japanese government to persecute this innocent Marine.’

 

Brown’s running commentaries from prison were widely distributed to Marines on Okinawa. Among his many points, he alarmed them with the argument that ‘There has never been a case in Japan where a U.S. serviceman has been arrested and later found to be innocent.’ As time wore on he began to lash out at everyone he could think of, from Marine Corps legal officers to ordinary Okinawans’”viz. ‘I would love to see the Okinawans get their land and their island back and I would love to see the U.S. servicemen leaving that island and spending their money elsewhere. At least then, the slimy Okinawan officials couldn’t get their hands on our guys anymore. This solution would make us all happy, right?  The Okinawans obviously don’t want us there. They don’t want our soldiers funding their local economy. They don’t want the jobs our bases provide. They don’t like the exorbitant fees we pay them to rent their lands. They don’t want us as a deterrent for their enemies. And, they don’t want us as neighbors.’31 This kind of rhetoric was surely more balm for Brown’s wounded ego than an effective defense strategy, but it did seem to influence the high command to inform politicians and state department officials of the military’s dissatisfaction with the flexible administration of the SOFA.

 

From Brown’s point of view, the big break in the case came May 13, 2003, when in open court Victoria Nakamine testified, ‘I wanted to withdraw my complaint. I cannot speak Japanese very well. I signed my written statement, but I didn’t understand what was written.’ She said further that on May 1 she had submitted a letter to the court stating, ‘I said I wanted to withdraw my complaint, but the police officers and prosecutors wouldn’t listen to me.’ This was a serious development. Hiroyuki Kawakami, deputy chief prosecutor at the Naha District Public Prosecutors Office, commented, ‘This is an offense subject to prosecution only on complaint from the victim, so it’s unlikely that a criminal case can be established in defiance of the victim’s intent.’32 In response to this development, on May 17, the court released Major Brown on ¥10 million bail but with the provisos that his passport be taken from him, he be confined to base at Camp Courtney, and that he not try to leave Okinawa. This action was unusual. Japanese courts accept defendants’ requests for bail in only 14.6 percent of cases.33 The court was obviously influenced by Nakamine’s recantation.

 

However, it should be understood that criminal trials in Japan are normally adjudicated by a panel of three judges, not by juries, and that these judges regard themselves’”and are so regarded by the public’”as highly experienced experts on whether or not someone is telling the truth. They are not subject to American-style rules of evidence, and they can and want to hear anything and everything about a case, including hearsay evidence, gossip, and rumor. One of the admirable elements of Japanese law, compared to American practice, is the judges’ rule that the testimony of a woman who claims to be a victim of a sex crime should be given more weight than that of the offender. In the Brown case, presiding judge Nobuyuki Yokota decided that Nakamine’s original statement to the police was believable and that she had probably withdrawn it under pressure from her employer and the society in which she lived. He ordered Brown’s trial to proceed.

 

Brown now erupted. In a letter to American Ambassador Baker he charged that ‘There is collusion between the court and prosecutor’ and that the Gushikawa police had framed him by writing Nakamine’s complaint for her and obtaining her signature even though she acknowledged that she does not read Japanese. He also instructed his attorney to appeal first to the Okinawa branch of the Fukuoka High Court and then to the Supreme Court that the three judges in his case be dismissed because they were patently prejudiced against him. Neither appeal succeeded, but it kept Brown’s case in the newspapers and contributed to the American Embassy’s worries about the cultural conflicts embedded in the SOFA.34

 

By the summer of 2003, Brown’s web site had received more that 68,000 hits, and inquiries from Congressional staff assistants about the fairness of Japanese justice were routine at the State Department.  Moreover, the war in Iraq was having an influence. Given the rising casualty rate among American troops, the Pentagon increasingly felt it had to protect the ‘human rights’ of military personnel so that their morale would not be damaged. The Asahi Shimbun quoted a U.S. government official as saying, ‘American soldiers are in Okinawa to defend Japan. They’re even prepared to die if necessary. And yet, when something happens, they [the Okinawans] will treat U.S. military personnel as criminals right away.’35

 

It was in this context that yet another brutal rape and beating of an Okinawan woman occurred, further inflaming popular sentiment against the bases. The U.S. government knew that it had to turn over the suspect fast, but it also decided that the time had come to force Japan to modify its criminal procedures in ways that conform more to American norms. This fateful decision produced a Japanese-American deadlock.

 

The Lance Corporal José Torres Case

 

Kin is a small, central Okinawan village with many once-unspoiled beaches facing south toward the Bay of Kin and the Pacific Ocean. The Marine Corps uses the beaches today to practice amphibious landings and for recreation by the troops and their families. The huge expanse of Camp Hansen and its contingent of 5,800 Marines dominates the village. In 1995, Kin was the scene of the abduction, beating, and gang rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl that launched the greatest Okinawan movement to date to get rid of the Americans. It is also where, until 1995, the Marine Corps regularly fired 155 mm. shells over the town in artillery practice, denuding and setting fires in the nearby forested hills. They stopped only when all of Okinawa erupted in rage after the 1995 rape. It is inconceivable that the Marines would (or would be allowed to) behave as they do in Kin anywhere in the United States or on the Japanese mainland. At the same time, many elderly residents of Kin are supported by rent payments the Japanese government still makes for land the U.S. military seized at bayonet point in the late 1950s to build Camp Hansen.

 

In one of his less inspired commentaries, Major Brown gave us his thoughts about Kin on his web site: ‘The sole purpose of Kin Town is to entertain GI’s. It’s basically a playground for young, horny men stationed thousands of miles from home. And, even though prostitution is supposed to be against the law in Okinawa, Kin Town exists with the full knowledge and support of Okinawan officials and U.S. Military officials. GI’s go to the bars and drink like fish, get into fights, and pay mama-sans for the company of young ladies. Deals are made for hand-jobs, blow-jobs, full, unadulterated sex, and just about anything in-between.’36 As someone who has been in Kin and interviewed local officials about the impact of the base and the military ‘training’ exercises, I should add that this description is true only of the few blocks directly in front of the main gate of Camp Hansen. It is lined with about 200 bars and nightclubs.

 

At around 3:15 AM on Sunday morning May 25, 2003, a 21-year-old Camp Hansen Marine, Lance Corporal José Torres, left a Kin Village bar with a local 19-year-old woman, had sex with her in a nearby alley, and hit her in the face breaking her nose. A female friend of hers went to the Camp Hansen main gate and reported Torres, whom the MPs at once took into custody. On June 12, the local police opened an investigation, and on June 16, they obtained a warrant for Torres arrest for rape and battery. The same day, the Japanese government in Tokyo asked the U.S. Embassy to hand him over. The newly arrived U.S. ambassador, Howard Baker, apologized for the incident and urged Marine Lt. Gen. Wallace C. Gregson, commander of all Marine forces in Okinawa, to comply rapidly. Gregson vacillated but he did call on Governor Inamine to express ‘regret.’ Inamine replied ‘I expect that [the United States] will hand over the suspect to Japan as soon as possible, without wasting a minute or even a second.’37 Baker said that he was trying to forestall mounting Japanese demands for a full revision of the SOFA. In Phnom Penh, attending a meeting of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Regional Forum, Secretary of State Colin Powell also apologized to Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi. On June 18, two days after the arrest warrant was issued, the Marines turned Torres over. At first he claimed that the sex was ‘consensual’”that the victim was a prostitute he had hired’”but on July 8, after prosecutors had indicted him, Torres confessed to charges of raping and beating the woman. On September 12, the Naha District Court sentenced Torres to three-and-a-half years in prison for his crime.38

 

[continued]

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