During this Period Of Reflection we must take a look at a few things. What I am about to say are just my own opinions and not of anyone else’s or any organization.

Japan is a country of great self-respect. They are so proud of themselves and won’t allow anything else, especially some other country interfere with their traditional self-pride. Understand this, when Japanese books told their students about how cruel and unusual Japan was during WWII to Okinawans, Chinese, and the Koreans, the government stepped in and decided to “strip” these school books of the truth. Censorship to preserve their integrity of being righteous. How would you feel if the American goverment just decided to erase everything about slavery during the Civil War era, or the Indian persecution? Japanese camps during WWII? But the top level Japanese officials thought it was for the good of the nation.

I felt something fishy with this whole “rape” case and the response we felt from Japan and the release. When the news spread about the case, of course Japan felt it imperative to launch attacks against the US military. With a 14 year-old girl being raped, that would provide the best poison for the spear that would surly gain enough political power to drive the US out of Okinawa. These people didn’t care about the little girl. The just wanted a big mistake to happen enough so that it would gather many sympathetic listeners. Now, the fact that the truth hadn’t been released yet about the case, also lead to quick movement for political action against the US bases. The Japanese police released sketchy details and information to media. Enough to get people riled up without fully knowing the truth. Some people I talked to thought he had already confessed, some thought they had already convicted him, others thought he was going to get hanged seeing how much news coverage this was getting.

The girl was picked up in a popular area by the American GI on his motorcycle. She was with two friend. The GI told the girl he was giving her a ride home. Instead he drove her to his home off base. He attempted to kiss her and forced himself to touch her inappropriately. She cried and told him she wanted to go home. They got into his car and he dropped her off at a local beach. That is where she says she was raped. Sometime between all this her friends called to check on her and she responded by asking her friends to call the police. The Japanese police picked up the GI and took him into custody. This was all we knew for the longest period of the whole incident. Not convicted or anything; yet people thought it must have been true if a 14 year-old girl had said it. Why would she lie? Embarrassment? It was up to the police to keep this fire burning. Had they release any information that would have tipped off people that the story might have been different, it wouldn’t have provided enough juice to keep the protest going. So after people had concluded in their minds that the girl was raped, the police didn’t release any other information. Huh? Wait, how long does it take to know if a girl had been raped? If she had been raped, they would have released that information as so to set a fool proof political stand. But they didn’t…

A few weeks later someone leaked information that he had confessed. No source, just the media talking about how someone said he confessed. Then a few days later he was released back to US Military custody. The reason? Get this, because the little girl dropped her criminal complaint.

“We’ve determined it is not appropriate to indict the suspect by applying charges, out of consideration for the victim’s feelings.”

Thats the chief prosecutor of the Naha District Public Prosecutors Office. Wait, wait, so lets get this straight. Because she didn’t want to go on further with the charges, the prosecutor dropped the charges too? Against an American? A GI!? On a rape case?!? This doesn’t happen. No, this doesn’t just happen.

Now, the truth is being investigated by the US Military and I may be wrong about everything, but here I go….

He didn’t rape her. He told the truth, but that wasn’t enough. The Japanese police have ways of making you seem like you did something when you really didn’t. I know from experience. He didn’t rape her, but if they leaked enough information to make it seem like he raped her, that would be enough to happily supply the political public to make a stand. Protest and media coverage began their onslaught. Any mistake the US military did was more then just a “normal” incident, it was an earthquake that would be throwing fuel on the fire. The police found out the truth. He didn’t rape her. How could they preserve the environment without bringing down their own drive? Perhaps leak that he admitted to the rape? They tried it, it didn’t work as good as they planned. So now, how could they get rid of this GI and still make it look like he got away from justice? They needed to keep the state of mind people had become to know, that this guy was a rapist. A plot was formed. Release the individual and say the victim was being overwhelmed with all that was happening in her life. Yes, this will provide more sympathy for the victim; who ever she was; because of course these people didn’t care who she was or what was happening to her. She was a pawn of their movements. And so here we are…the GI released, the Americans striving to find the truth and recover confidence, and the Japanese happy with the whole cover up and propaganda.