Sign Petition for U.S. Accountability for Yet Another G.I. Crime in Okinawa

 

Joseph Gerson, The Campaign for Peace, Disarmament & Common Security 

From:joseph@cpdcs.ccsend.com

To:m.mk@...

Tue, Oct 20, 2026 at 6:01 PM 

Friends, One of my frustrations over the years has been my inability to do more in solidarity with the people of Okinawa. That Japanese prefecture lost one quarter of all its people in the Battle of Okinawa, a battle to buy time to preserve the Japanese Emperor System in 1945. The U.S. then transformed the island into a military colony which “hosts” 70% of the more than 100 U.S. military bases and installations in Japan. In 1972, Okinawa was formally “returned” to Japan. But as the U.S. Consul General there told me several years ago, “the whole island is a U.S. base.”  Literally many thousands of crimes have been inflicted on the Okinawan people. Murders, sexual violence, and robberies on top of the land seizures, military accidents, live fire exercises and more. On October 3 Anna Yagi, an Okinawan woman, was murdered by a U.S. Marine. Women Against Military Violence has initiated a petition urging accountability. Anna Yagi’s life cannot be restored, but we can weigh in support of the Okinawan people. Joseph Gerson PS. For more detailed information, see my chapter about U.S. bases in Japan in The Sun Never Sets…Confronting the Network of U.S. Foreign Military Bases or David Vine’s Base Nation.