TOKYO - The apparent rape this month of a Japanese elementary school girl by three American servicemen in Okinawa has provoked an uproar in Japan, bringing calls to revise rules that critics say make it easy for American soldiers to get away with crimes and to remove American military bases. Seeking to quell the outcry, Ambassador Walter F. Mondale and Lt. General Richard B. Myers, commander of U.S. military forces in Japan, apologized to the Okinawa governor, Masahide Ota, at a meeting Tuesday in the American Embassy here.

``This terrible tragedy was an outrageous act toward humanity and makes all of us wearing the U.S. military uniform deeply ashamed,'' Myers said at a news conference later in the day.

He spoke in an American military hotel in Tokyo where top military officers from the United States and Japan and their wives gathered for a previously scheduled ``friendship dinner,'' celebrating 50 years of military cooperation since the end of World War II.

The controversy comes as the United States and Japan are trying to reaffirm their security relationship at a time when critics say the end of the cold war makes it unnecessary to station 45,000 American troops in Japan.

It is not likely that the Okinawa episode will cause a reevaluation of the entire security treaty. But it is leading to calls here for a change in the so-called status-of-forces agreement, which stipulates that members of the American armed forces suspected of crimes will not be turned over to the Japanese authorities until after they are formally indicted.

The alleged rape occurred the evening of Sept. 4 in an undisclosed city in northern Okinawa. The girl was walking home from shopping at about 8 p.m. when she was snatched off the street by men in a car, bound with adhesive tape, and taken to a beach and raped.

Three suspects are being held in a United States military prison in Okinawa. They are Marine Pfc. Rodrico Harp, 21, of Griffin, Ga.; Marine Pfc. Kendrick M. Ledet, 20, of Waycross, Ga., and Navy Seaman Marcus D. Gill, 22, of Jasper, Texas.

In light of the episode, Ota and many local assemblies in Okinawa have called for a revision of the status-of-forces agreement. They say the agreement puts the American military members above the law, making it hard for Japanese police to apprehend them.

Two years ago, for instance, an American soldier accused of raping a Japanese woman escaped to the United States after being held on his base. The man was eventually brought back to Japan, but the charges against him were dropped by the accuser, said a spokesman for the Marines in Okinawa. Mondale said Tuesday that the United States was cooperating with the rape investigation and was taking the three suspects to an Okinawa police station for interrogation every day.

Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said Tuesday that he saw no need to change the agreement since it was not impeding the investigation. Still, calls for change in the agreement are likely to continue. And the episode is expected to lead to more opposition in general to United States bases in Japan, especially on Okinawa.

``All Okinawans are shaking with anger,'' said Fumiko Nakamura, an 81-year-old opponent of the United States bases in Okinawa. ``We feel the same thing can happen again unless the bases are removed.''

Okinawa, a tropical island south of the main part of Japan, was the scene of one of the bloodiest battles in World War II and was occupied by the United States until 1972, two decades after the occupation of the rest of Japan ended.

There are 29,000 American troops on Okinawa, said a Marine Corps spokesman there. About 75 percent of U.S. military installations in Japan are on the small island, and these bases take up 20 percent of Okinawa's land. Many people resent the noise and artillery fire. Ota said Tuesday that there had been 4,500 criminal cases involving American servicemen since 1972. The greatest challenge to the bases in Japan, however, might not be Japanese opponents, but American budgetary constraints and the end of the cold war. But the Defense Department issued a report earlier this year confirming its commitment to keeping 100,000 troops in Asia to preserve stability in the region.

On Sept. 27, at a meeting in New York, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Secretary of Defense William J. Perry will meet with their Japanese counterparts and announce a new agreement increasing the amount of money the Japanese government will pay for keeping the American forces in Japan. In their summit meeting scheduled for November in Japan, President Clinton and Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama are expected to issue a statement reaffirming the security relationship.

--c.1995 N.Y. Times News Service

Back to Home Page