Don’t get me wrong. I was young when I arrived there, as was the case with thousands of other Marines who were stationed on the island. I was homesick, full of energy, got drunk, had a good time and got into a few scuffles here and there with other drunk Marines. You are away from your family and familiar surroundings, many for the first time stuck on a small island with little or nothing to do. What’s worse, the “natives” despised our presence, except on payday. When the money runs dry over the course of two weeks until the next payday, so does their disposition towards us. No matter what, though, when you have a large amount of people in a foreign land for a long period, you are bound to have problems.

On the same token, the majority of Marines who are in Okinawa just want to serve their time on the “rock” and go home. Most of us do not cause any problems for the locals and obey and respect the laws. I (we) do not advocate, condone or endorse the assault or rape of ANY one. Those who do break the law should be punished accordingly, not all service members. I am totally against punishing the innocent to cach a few people.

We (most of us) treat your island with dignity, even though you hated us being there and respect your customs. Prior to going to Okinawa, our unit was especially cautioned not to mess with the JPs. I don’t here at home, so in effect, of course I would respect the police in another country.

I just think that if the military were to leave Okinawa, it would be a financial disaster for the island. Many locals who depend on the miltary for employment would be hit hard, as well as many businesses.

Back to the topic at hand though, you both have good points. I’ve seen both individual and group punishment go both ways. If the drunkeness and downright undiscipline are common among the soldiers i.e. happening every night with at least 10-20 out of 100 soldiers involved, then yes, harsher group punishment should be enforced.

But if it’s just the rare occurance, then single punishment works just fine. No reason to punish a base for 1% of the soldiers faults. Bring that up to 5%-10% of soldiers on the blotter though, lock down the base, maybe for a month or so, and their battlebuddies will square them away.

I suppose all those pushups, restricted-to-base, etc. never happened.

Oh, and it turns out the base commander thinks just like me.

That will be all.

[Oh, and I'll let you get away without the "Sir" this time only.]

“I think people who want to have dumb stupid American kids on foreign soil are right winged nationalists. Please go to Iraq. Japan is a peaceful country, no need for them in Japan.”

US forces in Japan are there at the request of the Japanese government, and they’re far from being right wing extremists. And I’m sure the extreme nationalists want the US out as well, considering that a US withdrawal means the Japanese government has to speed up revision of article 9 to fill in the void that a US withdrawal would create.

What does that say about its leadership?

Leave Okinawa now!

It’s a good thing you aren’t the base commander, funny how everyone has the answer to military discipline with no military experience. So you want to screw over all the decent troops in Okinawa who might actually have a life in the community, speak Japanese, and look forward to spending time off base or live off base for the reason of just wanting to be in Japan. Once again punish the individual punish them hard and that should be enough for all sides to see the seriousness of this. There may be a few idiots who still act up, but catch them and punish them. Don’t screw over people who don’t deserve it.

I’m more bothered about how some of the soldiers are apparently angry over the rape incident… The way the article phrases it it sounds as if they’re on the side of the rapist. Are they spectacularly small minded or is there another side to this that isn’t reported…? In general, I haven’t seen reports on the military response (other than get drunk and fall asleep on someone else’s couch) to the whole debacle.

However, if I were the base commander in Okinawa, all off-base activity would be cancelled for the next 6 months. It would send a message to the troops about discipline, and send an additional message to local population who depend on the business from the base.