Naha, Okinawa Pref., Oct. 5 (Jiji Press)–About 100 people gathered near the Okinawa prefectural government building Sunday, in protest after a U.S. Marine was arrested in a murder-robbery case in the southernmost Japan prefecture. Many participants voiced anger at the case and many other crimes committed by those linked to U.S. military bases in Okinawa, with one of them saying, “How much longer do we have to bear all of this?” Okinawa police arrested Devin Jacob Ballard, who is stationed at the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma air base in the Okinawa city of Ginowan, on Sunday for allegedly killing a 39-year-old woman in a room of a hotel in Naha, the capital of the prefecture, and stealing her belongings on Saturday. In Sunday’s protest rally, organized on a proposal posted on social media, a woman in her 40s from the Okinawa city of Nago, who brought her 4-year-old son with her, said, “I feel it’s a contradiction that a serviceman stationed at a U.S. military base in Okinawa to protect Japan has killed a civilian.” A woman in her 40s from Ginowan said, “I don’t want to see any more people hurt.” About 70 pct of facilities in Japan dedicated for use by the U.S. military are located in Okinawa. Since 2020, the number of cases that led to Okinawa police taking action against U.S. troops or members of their families has been on the rise. According to data from the Okinawa prefectural police department, action was taken against 80 U.S. base-linked people in 101 cases in 2025, with the number of cases exceeding 100 for the first time in 22 years. The figures were up from 35 people in 39 cases in 2020. Such cases included robberies, assaults and sexual crimes. A U.S. Marine was indicted on suspicion of sexually assaulting a woman at a U.S. base in Okinawa in March last year. It became known in June 2024 that a serviceman belonging to the U.S. Kadena Air Base in the prefecture had been indicted for allegedly raping a girl who was under 16. This and some other additional incidents led to widespread protests in Okinawa as neither the Japanese government nor Okinawa police had informed the prefectural government. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
