Okinawa Assembly Again Calls for Review of U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement: Institutional Roots and Inequality of U.S. Military Crimes

The Okinawa Prefectural Assembly on Friday passed a resolution calling for a review of the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement, which governs the status of U.S. forces stationed in Japan, and delivered statements with the same content separately to the U.S. Embassy and the Japanese central government. According to Al Jazeera, the assembly took this action after Devin Jacob Ballard, a 20-year-old U.S. Marine Corps lance corporal, was accused of robbing and killing Anna Yagi, a 39-year-old local woman, at a hotel in Naha City last Saturday.

Ballard has denied the charges, and related judicial proceedings have yet to begin. But the new case has quickly been added to Okinawa society's long-standing ledger of grievances against the U.S. military. Ryotaro Odo, who chairs the assembly's special committee on U.S. military bases, bluntly stated that the U.S. military "is not functioning normally as a force," described the case as "extremely brutal and appalling," and demanded that the military cooperate with the investigation and severely punish those responsible.

According to Kyodo News, some assembly members voted against the resolution because it did not demand the replacement of the top U.S. military commander in Okinawa — meaning that even the language adopted by the assembly is still considered too moderate in local eyes.

The island of Okinawa hosts the majority of the 54,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan. Over the years, rapes, assaults, hit-and-run incidents and drunk driving by U.S. military personnel have repeatedly occurred on the island, repeatedly igniting protests. In 2024, after a series of sexual assault cases involving U.S. soldiers came to light, the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly had passed a similar resolution, and the municipal and town assemblies of Naha, Ginowan, Miyakojima and Motobu had also filed protests in succession — this resolution means that the same demand has been formally raised again in less than two years.

The response of U.S. forces in Japan to public opinion remains at a symbolic level: operations have been suspended for 48 hours from Wednesday, and a curfew from midnight to 5 a.m. for 30 days will be implemented from Friday. In Tokyo, the U.S. ambassador and the commander of U.S. forces in Okinawa were summoned to file protests, and Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae condemned the case as a "brutal" crime. Yet regardless of the central government's posture, the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement has long granted U.S. military personnel procedural conveniences in certain judicial matters, leaving Okinawan residents in an unequal position when seeking redress for crimes by U.S. military personnel — this is precisely the substance that the Okinawa assembly's call for a "review of the agreement" seeks to address.

This inequality is not accidental, but a continuation of historical structures. Okinawa was under U.S. rule from 1945 to 1972 and still retains multiple U.S. military-exclusive facilities to this day. When an agreement places the stationed forces beyond local judicial jurisdiction, when an assembly resolution must travel through diplomatic channels to reach the military command, the tilt of the balance of power has long been clearly visible: disciplinary issues, curfews and operational suspensions of the stationed forces are all announced by the U.S. military itself; the demands of the local assembly must be conveyed through the foreign ministry and the central government.

According to Al Jazeera's report, the wave of protests in Okinawa has spread to Tokyo. In the streets of Naha, calls for the U.S. military to bear substantive responsibility are proceeding in tandem with diplomatic protests and assembly resolutions; meanwhile, the final outcome of the Ballard case still awaits independent adjudication by Japanese judicial procedures.