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Okinawa murder dominates talks between Obama and Abe

 
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right, on the Ujibashi bridge as they visit the Ise Jingu shrine in Ise, Mie prefecture Thursday in Japan, ahead of the first session of the G7 summit meetings. The leaders of the G-7 nations have arrived for a visit at Ise Jingu, the most hallowed site for Japan's indigenous Shinto religion. [Pool photo via Associated Press]
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right, on the Ujibashi bridge as they visit the Ise Jingu shrine in Ise, Mie prefecture Thursday in Japan, ahead of the first session of the G7 summit meetings. The leaders of the G-7 nations have arrived for a visit at Ise Jingu, the most hallowed site for Japan's indigenous Shinto religion. [Pool photo via Associated Press]
Published May 26, 2016

TOKYO — The brutal murder of an Okinawa woman, allegedly by a U.S. military contractor, dominated a meeting between the American and Japanese leaders Wednesday night, with President Barack Obama expressing his "deepest regrets" to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over the "tragedy."

The murder has reignited outrage in the southern island prefecture over the large American military presence there, with thousands of people protesting Wednesday outside the U.S. Air Force base where the contractor worked.

"This is an unforgivable crime, and I have expressed our anger. It has shocked not just the Okinawa people but also all the people of Japan," Abe told reporters after an hour-long bilateral meeting with Obama in Ise-Shima, ahead of the Group of Seven summit that will begin Thursday. The Okinawa case took up most of the time, Abe said.

Okinawa police last week arrested Kenneth Shinzato, a 32-year-old former U.S. Marine, in connection with the murder of 20-year-old Rina Shimabukuro. Shinzato was working as a computer and electrical contractor on Kadena Air Base.

The body of Shimabukuro, who disappeared April 28, was found last week in a forest in the village of Onna, near where Shinzato told police they would find her. She appeared to have been stabbed and strangled, according to local news reports.

Shinzato, a civilian employee born Kenneth Franklin Gadson, took his wife's name when they got married. He confessed to the crime, domestic media have reported. He has been charged with abandoning a body, a step that is often a precursor to a murder charge in Japan.

Using surprisingly strong language, the Japanese prime minister said he felt "profound resentment" at the "self-centered and absolutely despicable crime."

"I have asked the president to carry out effective measures to prevent a recurrence of such crimes," Abe said, a solemn-faced Obama standing beside him.

The murder threatened to dampen some of the high spirits among the Japanese public in anticipation of Obama's historic stop in Hiroshima on Friday. Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site where the United States dropped the world's first atomic bomb in 1945 near the end of World War II. Administration officials said the visit will highlight the deep post-war alliance between the two nations.

On his trip to Asia, including three days in Vietnam, Obama has sought to move beyond past grievances from long-ago conflicts, promising to look to the future when he makes remarks at Hiroshima's 30-acre Peace Memorial Park. Last week, Japanese Ambassador Kenichiro Sasae told reporters in Washington that the murder in Okinawa was a "shocking" atrocity and that the Japanese government expressed its outrage to the Obama administration.

But Sasae was careful to separate the crime from Obama's trip to Hiroshima, where the president will be joined by Abe.

"I don't think this should be affecting the president's visit to Hiroshima," Sasae said. "This is something different," he said. "We have to address this ⅛Okinawa⅜ question … but it doesn't mean that issue should be affecting in any way the meaning of the American president visiting Hiroshima."

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Anti-American sentiment was already running high in Okinawa, with sizable and ongoing opposition to attempts to relocate a Marine Corps base to a new site on the island. The murder would create a new "tough and challenging road ahead," Abe said.

At the news conference, Obama said he understood that the incident has "shaken up" people in Okinawa and across Japan.

"I want to emphasize that the United States is appalled by any violent crime that may have occurred or been carried out by any U.S personnel or U.S. contractors," the president said. He called the murder "inexcusable."

Echoing Abe's words, Obama said the United States is "committed to doing everything we can to prevent any crimes from taking place of this sort." He suggested that Shinzato, who is in Japanese custody on Okinawa, would be tried under Japan's justice system, even though he is covered by the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, that provides the legal framework for the American military presence in Japan.

Obama said the SOFA did not prevent the full prosecution and the need for justice under the Japanese legal system.

"We will be fully cooperating with the Japanese legal system in prosecuting this individual and making sure that justice is served," he said. "We want to see a crime like this prosecuted here in the same way that we would feel horrified and want to provide a sense of justice to a victim's family back in the United States."

The somber nature of the news conference, held just hours after Obama landed in Japan, stood in stark contrast to the president's visit to Vietnam, where he was feted by the leaders of the ruling Communist Party. The White House announced the lifting of a 50-year embargo on arms sales to Vietnam after a bilateral meeting between Obama and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang in Hanoi.

Although Shinzato is no longer a Marine, he has "SOFA status" as a civilian contractor, the U.S. military has said. Under the agreement, Japan cannot prosecute people covered by it for crimes committed during the course of their work. Even though that provision would not apply in this case, the murder has raised questions about why a civilian employee would enjoy the protections of the deal in the first place.

The case is stirring up memories of a brutal incident in 1995, in which three U.S. servicemen abducted and raped a 12-year-old Okinawa girl. The case triggered huge protests and became a lightning rod for anti-American sentiment on the island chain.

Okinawans contend that they shoulder too much of the burden of Japan's security alliance with the United States, saying their island accounts for 1 percent of Japanese territory but hosts 73 percent of the bases. The U.S. military disputes the latter figure, saying that only 39 percent of its "exclusive use facilities" are on Okinawa.

About 4,000 people from citizens' groups and politicians from the ruling party in the Okinawa prefectural assembly protested Wednesday near the Kadena base.

Although the roar of American planes fills the sky above Okinawa, the Kadena base has been relatively uncontroversial. Instead, local efforts have been focused on trying to stop the relocation of the existing Marine Corps air station at Futenma, in a crowded part of the island, to a more remote site near Henoko in the north of Okinawa's main island.

The anti-base governor, Takeshi Onaga, has been leading the charge to have the base moved entirely out of the prefecture.