Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara told reporters Monday that “the government will work with the United States to thoroughly make sure there will be no recurrence, and reduce burdens on local residents”.
News of the soldier’s arrest immediately prompted Japan’s foreign affairs and defence ministers to summon senior American officials to convey their “extreme disappointment” and “lodge strong protests”, Kihara added.
The incident came just a few weeks after Okinawa elected Genta Koja as its new governor, ending the eight-year rule by his predecessor who had long pushed for a major US military base to be moved off the island.
Koja, 42, accepts a central government plan to keep the US Marine Corps’ Futenma air base on Okinawa’s main island, but to move it to a less populated location.
Calling the robbery-murder “extremely malicious in nature”, Koja told reporters Sunday it “hugely shocked residents here who are forced to live side by side with the bases, and instilled new fear in them”.
“I am infuriated,” the governor said.
He said the incident showed US efforts to “educate soldiers and improve their behaviour have not been functioning at all”, adding he will “soon” travel to Tokyo to lodge a protest with top government officials including Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
Last 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 worker was sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a local woman in Okinawa.