Visualizing complaints about the American military presence in Japan

american military crime

September 11th, 2009 by James

In a news segment yesterday morning about the Okinawa military base issue, Fuji TV included a summary of some of the complaints Japanese have about American troops enjoying special privileges in Japan. To help the audience understand, they put their cartoonist to work.



Shown in the video:

* Members of the US military do not need alien registration cards to live in Japan.

* They don’t need to pay Japanese sales tax when shopping at on base stores.

* Japanese police are only allowed to arrest US troops if they are caught in the act of committing a crime. In other cases, they must request permission from the US military to question or detain members of the US military. This makes it difficult for Japanese police to carry out investigations.

* The Japanese government must pay for base expenses, including the salary of Japanese civilians who have jobs working for the bases.

The DPJ recently agreed to a coalition government, giving in to requests from its partners, the Social Democratic Party and New People’s Party, that it take a more aggressive stance towards revising the status of forces agreement between the US and Japan. Hatoyama has also maintained that his government will end Japan’s military aid to the international mission in Afghanistan.

http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=12572

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a36VfKs31YI