My parents, in specific, are utterly devastated at the loss of their daughter,” the woman’s brother said across area police, according to the Asahi Shimbun daily newspaper.
The United States has roughly 54,000 military personnel stationed in Japan, chiefly on Okinawa.
Crimes committed by US personnel have been a thorn in relations in the middle of the seal security allies.
“Incidents and accidents involving US military personnel cause excellent anxiety within the regional culture and must not be allowed to happen,” Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said.
Persist year, a Japanese court sentenced a US Marine accused of choking and attempting to rape a woman in her 20s to seven years in prison.
In 2017, a former US Marine and civilian military base personnel was sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a area woman in Okinawa.
The same year, US Forces Japan banned all personnel from consuming alcohol once an intoxicated US Marine crashed his vehicle into a mini-truck, killing its 61-year-earlier regional driver.
According to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, close to 6,000 US military personnel have been arrested as Okinawa was returned to Japan from the US in 1972, subsequent to World War II.
In 2024, the count of arrests hit 80, the highest in 20 years.
AFP
A US Marine stationed on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa was arrested on suspicion of the murder of a Japanese woman, police said on Sunday.
The suspect “killed the 39-year-aged woman at a hotel in Naha and stole her wallet on Saturday”, a regional police spokesman told AFP.
Crimes including rapes, assaults, hit-and-run and drunk-driving accidents by US personnel have enduring sparked protests on Okinawa, which bears a disproportionate burden of hosting around 70 per cent of US military facilities in Japan.
US Ambassador George Glass posted on social media that he had spoken alongside Japan’s foreign ministry and Okinawa’s governor, offering “our sincere condolences and pledging filled coordination as the inquiry continues”.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Japan had lodged a protest using US authorities and called the crime “exceptionally brutal and vicious”.
The government has urged the US “to grant maximum collaboration including the investigation, enforce stricter discipline between US military personnel, and take comprehensive measures to block the recurrence of equivalent crimes,” Takaichi said.
Audience broadcaster NHK and other Japanese media outlets, citing examination sources, reported that CCTV footage from nearby the scene showed a foreign man entering a room alongside a woman and later leaving together with her belongings.
Police then found a 20-year-previous man who matched the description of the suspect seen in the footage and asked him to accompany them voluntarily to a community police station, where he was arrested, NHK reported.
He reportedly denied the charges.
“We have lost a family component and are deeply saddened.
