The killing of a woman in Okinawa has sparked an outcry across Japan and inflamed long-simmering tensions over the US military presence on the island.
US Marine Devin Ballard was arrested on Sunday on suspicion of strangling Anna Yagi, 39, whose body was found at a hotel in Naha, the largest city on Okinawa. The 20-year-old lance corporal has denied the allegations.
‘Brutal’ crime
Security footage shows a man resembling Ballard entering the hotel with Yagi, and later leaving alone with her belongings, according to public broadcaster NHK. Yagi’s body was found in her hotel room.
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Ballard, who was arrested in a civilian district while off duty, will remain in the custody of the Japanese authorities. If convicted, he could face life in prison or the death penalty.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi urged US authorities to “enforce stricter discipline” of their troops in light of the “brutal and heinous” killing, while Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi posted on social media about his “strong indignation”. Incidents involving US military personnel “cause significant anxiety to the local community and must never occur”, he said.
On Okinawa, the incident has met with protests and also a grim familiarity. “Honestly my first reaction was, ‘Not again’,” one local told the BBC.
‘Anti-US sentiment’
Crimes involving US troops stationed on Okinawa have been “a constant source of tension between Tokyo and Washington”, said The Guardian. Most of the 54,000 US troops in Japan, and 70% of their military facilities, are based on the island.
In 1995, when three American servicemen raped a 12-year-old girl, tens of thousands of people protested for months, intensifying the “anti-US sentiment” in Okinawa. A teenage girl was raped by a US serviceman in 2024, one of four sexual crimes linked to US military personnel that year, and “anger erupted again”. It’s a problem that seems to be increasing: last year, there were 101 recorded crimes involving US troops, according to prefectural police – up from 40 in 2020.
The killing of Yagi is emblematic of a decades-long issue for the people of Okinawa, gender and peace professor Kozue Akibayashi told Al Jazeera. “They have expressed countless times their opposition to, and anger at, the US military presence,” she said. But Tokyo has “chosen the US-Japan alliance over the safety and lives and voices” of its people.
