SOFA Negotiations
This case, as banal and routine as it was in the context of the vast array of military sex crimes in Okinawa, was nonetheless the last straw for both the Japanese and American governments. It led them into hardened positions that seem likely to be resolved only by some American pretext such as a “global force reform” and the withdrawal of significant numbers of Marines from Okinawa.39 On the Japanese side, there was a lot going on in addition to the Torres case that kept the issue of the SOFA and Japan’s sovereignty before the public. Major Brown’s trial was continuing; in March, a drunken Defense Department employee from Camp Hansen drove his car head-on into another, killing the Okinawan driver; on May 7, another Marine was arrested for mugging a store clerk who was walking home; the wife of a Marine assigned to Camp Foster punched and tried to strangle an Okinawan woman in the restroom of an Okinawa City bar; and on May 31—the day after they were paid—five drunken Marines were arrested between 1:00 and 3:00 AM for failing to pay a ¥4,800 cab fare, trespassing on the premises of a private home, and damaging the glass entrance to the civic hall in Okinawa City. Okinawa City lies directly outside Kadena Air Force Base; once known as Koza, the town changed its name in 1972, after the Ryukyus reverted to Japanese administration, because Koza had become synonymous with incessant bar brawls and race riots among Americanservicemen.40
During June 2003, Governor Inamine and his deputy governor set out on a “pilgrimage” to the thirteen other prefectures that host U.S. military facilities and asked each governor to cooperate with his campaign to force the central government to revise the SOFA. All the governors agreed. Inamine’s biggest success was gaining the endorsement of Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, a popular right-wing politician with a long record of hostility to the American bases.41 Ishihara commented, “America’s international strategy cannot be implemented without the bases in Japan. We are doing them a big favor here. . . . A half century has passed since the end of World War II, but Japan remains in an inferior position. It is strange to anyone who looks at it.”42 This kind of remark from a man said to be in line for the prime ministership and mayor of the world’s largest city put real pressure on the national government to end its obsequiousness toward the Americans.
However, just as the Japanese side was fortifying its position, the Americans also decided to toughen their stance. In turning over Torres to the Japanese police, the American Embassy stated that it wanted immediate negotiations to ensure that American servicemen “will be treated in a fair and humanitarian manner while in the local police’s custody.”43 The U.S. said that when it agreed in 1995 to give “sympathetic consideration” to requests for pre-indictment turnovers, it had asked as a quid pro quo that Japan give U.S. servicemen special treatment because of the differences between the American and Japanese legalsystems. The U.S. government now demanded that Japan quit stalling on new rules governing implementation of the SOFA—and that it do so within 45 days. The Asahi Shimbun said that the Americans were influenced by the Major Brown case, noting that Brown had never wavered from his not guilty plea and that in his on-going trial, he had refused to speak in his own defense because he believed that he could not get justice in Japan.
The Asahi also commented on the refusal of the United States to join the new International Criminal Court, which had just gone into operation in The Hague, as a sign that the Bush administration was determined to set new rules for the world, not just for Japan. It noted the U.S.’s refusal to abide by many international laws it had helped enact, its invasion of Iraq without legal sanction, and its belief that it was so powerful that it could act more or less as it pleased in international affairs. The Asahi quoted Professor Masaaki Gabe of the University of the Ryukyus, probably Japan’s best informed commentator on the base problems: “Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz and other U.S. officials in the present administration believe that American justice will pass muster anywhere in the world, and they do not necessarily give priority to the bilateral relationship with Japan.” According to Gabe, the U.S.’s difficult military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan caused it to put a higher priority on its own troops’ morale than on Okinawa’s endless complaints about military misbehavior.44
The Japanese agreed to the requested negotiations and convened talks on July 2, 2003, in Tokyo. The two delegations were led by Yasumasa Nagamine, counselor of the Foreign Ministry’s North American Affairs Bureau, together with officials from the Ministry of Justice and the National Police Agency, and by Brian Mohler, director of the Office of Japanese Affairs at the State Department. The United States asked that a U.S. government official and an American-selected interpreter, for which it was willing to pay, be assigned to every military suspect turned over to the Japanese to ensure that he understood the questioning and was not tricked into confessing. The Ministry of Justice and the National Police Agency said that this request was an impossible interference in Japan’s settled ways of investigating crimes. The U.S. replied that in most of its SOFAs with other countries it turns over military suspects only after they have been indicted and that it was already giving Japan “preferential treatment.” After two days the talks deadlocked. A second attempt to reach agreement was scheduled for a Pentagon meeting on July 11.
The resumed talks in Washington were no more productive than those in Tokyo. The main issue clearly centered not on the interpreter, since the Japanese already supply foreigner detainees with good interpreters, but on the presence of an American official, perhaps an attorney, in all interrogation sessions. Japan argues that, “In our country, a lawyer is not allowed to attend investigations under normal circumstances and nothing in the SOFA says that Japan has an obligation to let persons connected with the U.S. government attend investigations by Japanese authorities.”45 Japan’s negotiators also said that measures taken by American authorities to maintain discipline and prevent sex crimes in Okinawa had been insufficient. The U.S. side replied that if there was no progress in the consultations, the U.S. government would not agree in the future to turn over U.S. military suspects before indictment. All the two sides could agree upon was to meet and try again on July 24 at U.S. Pacific Fleet headquarters in Honolulu.
In Honolulu, the American delegation was headed by Richard P. Lawless, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs, a former National Security Council staff member in the Reagan administration and before that a CIA operational agent. He is said to speak Korean. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs made clear that it was prepared to accept the American requests, but that the Justice Ministry and Police Agency were dead set against it. The talks ended in failure, with negotiators on both sides saying that the issue would have to be referred to a higher political level.
Sometime between July 25 and 29, to the great consternation of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, President Bush telephoned Prime Minister Koizumi and talked over the matter. The result was that Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Teijiro Furukawa ordered senior officials in the Foreign and Justice ministries to produce a compromise. At a fourth round of talks in Washington on July 31, Japan therefore agreed to allow a U.S. government representative to be present during interrogations of military suspects, but only in cases of “heinous crimes.” Such a U.S. governmental presence would be authorized in the name of Japanese-American “investigative cooperation,” not “human rights;” the Japanese side could, at its discretion, ask the U.S. official briefly to leave the room at critical points in the interrogation; and the U.S. side would be involved in the selection of interpreters. The U.S. government rejected this compromise, saying it would not tolerate any conditions being placed on U.S. officials and that it wanted them present for all charges, not just heinous crimes. With the failure of the negotiations, the 1995 agreement on “sympathetic consideration” became a dead letter. A Pentagon source explained that U.S. had no choice in the matter since its military forces would be demoralized if their human rights could not be assured.46
In the months since Japan and the U.S. gave up on the SOFA, there have been endless rumors that the United States is planning a substantial reform of its basing policies in East Asia. In South Korea, possibly the most anti-American democracy on earth today, there have been major street demonstrations calling for a revised SOFA or, more pointedly, for all American forces to leave the country. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced plans to move the U.S.’s Yongsan Base from the old Japanese military headquarters in downtown Seoul to some remote area and to relocate the 2nd Infantry Division, based close to the demilitarized zone with North Korea, to undisclosed locations south of the Han River. Senator Daniel Inouye (D.-Hawaii) hinted to a delegation of LDP politicians that the U.S. might move some Okinawa-based Marines to Hawaii as a way of revitalizing the Hawaiian economy. Many consultations between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage have dwelt on “streamlining the U.S. military presence in Okinawa.” The Japanese press has observed that in the past this subject was usually brought up by the Japanese side in a pro-forma way but that after the United States declared its “war on terror” and invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, it has shown greater interest in doing something about it.47
During early November, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld toured Japan, Okinawa, and South Korea. He noted that the presence of thousands of U.S. troops on Japanese soil was a source of friction and that “Perhaps the toughest of those tensions is the question of whether to extend fuller legal protections to U.S. service members accused of crimes.”48 On November 27, 2003, President George W. Bush said in an official statement that “Beginning today, the United States will intensify our consultation with the Congress and our friends, allies, and partners overseas on our ongoing review of our overseas force posture.”49 The administration has indicated that nations such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea could see a significant decrease in the U.S. military presence as the Pentagon focuses more on the “war on terror.”
It is, of course, difficult to know whether or when any of this will come to pass. Okinawa has been an American military colony for the past fifty-eight years, and throughout that period the rape of local women by American soldiers has been the dominant metaphor of America’s imperial presence. It would be deeply ironic if the misbehavior of Sergeant Woodland, Major Brown, and Corporal Torres finally brought about the liberation of Okinawa.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate