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U.S. ambassador to Japan expresses regret over alleged sex assaults by military personnel in Okinawa
The U.S. ambassador to Japan expressed regret on Saturday for the handling of two cases of sexual assaults allegedly committed by American military service members stationed in Okinawa.
The issue arose late last month, triggering an uproar over reports that two American service members had been charged with sexual assaults months earlier.
Both cases were first reported in local media in late June. In one arrest made in March, a member of the U.S. Air Force was charged with the kidnapping and sexual assault of a teenager, and in May, a U.S. Marine was arrested on charges of attempted rape resulting in injury. Further details about the alleged victims were not released.
Okinawa police said they did not announce the cases out of privacy considerations related to the victims. The Foreign Ministry, per police decision, also did not notify Okinawa prefectural officials.
U.S. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel said on Saturday he deeply regretted what happened to the individuals, their families and their community, but fell short of apologizing.
“Obviously, you got to let the criminal justice process play out. But that doesn’t mean you don’t express on a human level your sense of regret.”
“We have to do better,” he said, adding that the U.S. military’s high standards and protocols for education and training of its troops was “just not working.”
PHILIP FONG / AFP via Getty Images
Okinawa accounts for just 0.6% of Japan’s land mass but hosts about 70% of all the U.S. military bases and facilities in the country.
The two cases stoked resentment of the heavy U.S. troop presence on the strategic island in Japan’s far southwest. They are also a minder of the 1995 gang rape of a 12-year-old girl by three U.S. service members. It led to a 1996 agreement between Tokyo and Washington to close a key U.S. air base, although the plan has been repeatedly delayed due to protests at the site designated for its replacement on another part of the island.
Emanuel said the U.S. may be able to propose measures to improve training and transparency with the public at U.S.-Japan foreign and defense ministers’ security talks expected later this month in Tokyo.
On Friday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said the Japanese authorities would do their utmost to provide more prompt disclosures of alleged crimes related to U.S. military personnel on Okinawa while protecting victims’ privacy.
The cases could be a setback for the defense relationship at a time when Okinawa is seen as increasingly important in the face of rising tensions with China.
Some 50,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Japan under a bilateral security pact, about half of them on Okinawa, where residents have long complained about heavy U.S. troop presence and related accidents, crime and noise.
Emanuel commented on the issue while visiting Fukushima, on Japan’s northeast coast.
Earlier Saturday, the ambassador visited the nearby town of Minamisoma to join junior surfers and sample locally-caught flounder for lunch, aiming to highlight the safety of the area’s seawater and seafood amid ongoing discharges of treated and diluted radioactive water from the tsunami-ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
China has banned Japanese seafood over the discharges, a move Emanuel criticized as unjustified.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters says workers at seven Amazon facilities will begin a strike Thursday morning in an effort by the union to pressure the e-commerce giant for a labor agreement during a key shopping period.
The Teamsters say the workers, who authorized walkouts in the past few days, are joining the picket line after Amazon ignored a Dec. 15 deadline the union set for contract negotiations. Amazon says it doesn’t expect any impact on its operations during what the union calls the largest strike against the company in U.S. history.
The Teamsters say they represent nearly 10,000 workers at 10 Amazon facilities, a small portion of the 1.5 million people Amazon employs in its warehouses and corporate offices.
Amazon is ranked No. 2 on the Fortune 500 list of the nation’s largest companies.
At a warehouse in the New York City borough of Staten Island, thousands of workers who voted for the Amazon Labor Union in 2022 and have since affiliated with the Teamsters. At the other facilities, employees – including many delivery drivers – have unionized with them by demonstrating majority support but without holding government-administered elections.
The strikes happening Thursday are taking place at an Amazon warehouse in San Francisco and six delivery stations in southern California, New York City, Atlanta and the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, according to the union’s announcement. Amazon workers at the other facilities are “prepared to join” them, the union said.
“Amazon is pushing its workers closer to the picket line by failing to show them the respect they have earned,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” he said.
The Seattle-based online retailer has been seeking to re-do the election that led to the union victory at the warehouse on Staten Island, which the Teamsters now represent. In the process, the company has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board.
Meanwhile, Amazon says the delivery drivers, which the Teamsters have organized for more than a year, aren’t its employees. Under its business model, the drivers work for third-party businesses, called Delivery Service Partners, who drop off millions of packages to customers everyday.
“For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public – claiming that they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers’. They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement. “The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union.“
The Teamsters have argued Amazon essentially controls everything the drivers do and should be classified as an employer.
Some U.S. labor regulators have sided with the union in filings made before the NLRB. In September, Amazon boosted pay for the drivers amid the growing pressure.
NEW YORK — The Teamsters union is launching a strike against Amazon at numerous locations across the country, including in Maspeth, Queens.
The Teamsters are calling it the largest strike against Amazon in United States history, and it’s set to begin at 6 a.m. Thursday. In addition to New York City, workers will be joining picket lines in Atlanta, Southern California, San Francisco and Illinois.
In a video announcement released Wednesday night, workers voiced their frustrations.
“Us being strike ready means we’re fed up, and Amazon is clearly ignoring us and we want to be heard,” one worker says in the video.
“It’s really exciting. We’re taking steps for ourselves to win better conditions, better benefits, better wages,” another worker in the video says.
The union says it represents about 10,000 Amazon employees and that Amazon ignored a deadline to come to the table and negotiate. The $2 trillion company doesn’t pay employees enough to make ends meet, the union asserts.
At the height of the holiday season, many are wondering what this means for packages currently in transit.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said, “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed.”
Amazon says Teamsters are misleading the public
An Amazon spokesperson says the Teamsters are misleading the public and do not represent any Amazon employees, despite any claims.
“The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
An Amazon representative says the company doesn’t expect operations to be impacted.
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