Police were summoned to a hotel in Naha, the capital of Japan’s Okinawa prefecture, in the early hours of last Saturday after staff made a disturbing discovery in one of the rooms.
A hotel worker became concerned when a 39-year-old Japanese guest, Anna Yagi, failed to check out at the scheduled time the previous day. The employee entered the room to investigate.
Yagi was found unconscious, and paramedics were unable to revive her. A post-mortem examination concluded that she died from suffocation after being strangled between approximately 2am and 4am.
Investigators reviewing hotel security footage saw a foreign man with a shaved head and tattoos arrive with Yagi. Hours later, he was recorded leaving by himself with her wallet and backpack. Both items were subsequently recovered near the hotel.
The suspect was arrested less than 24 hours later while walking through the city. Police reportedly identified him by his distinctive tattoos.
The man was identified as 20-year-old US Marine Lance Corporal Devin Jacob Ballard. His arrest on robbery and murder allegations has triggered a fresh crisis in relations between the United States and one of its most important Asian allies.
Supporters of the US military presence could argue that, amid the Trump administration’s efforts to scale back overseas defense commitments and growing military pressure from China and North Korea, the alleged killing is an awful but isolated cost of America’s security role in the region.
Yet protests in Okinawa and Tokyo in recent days have underscored a long-standing grievance: Japanese civilians have repeatedly been killed or harmed by US service members, both accidentally and intentionally.
Police arrested Lance Corporal Devin Jacob Ballard, 20, less than 24 hours after he allegedly strangled a 39-year-old woman to death
Ballard’s arrest on robbery and murder allegations has plunged relations between the United States and one of its key Asian allies into a growing crisis.
Japan is home to the largest US military presence of any country, with Okinawa hosting the overwhelming majority of those forces.
About 1.4 million people live in Okinawa, with roughly 90 percent residing on Okinawa Main Island, the largest of the prefecture’s 160 islands. The region is also home to more than 30,000 US military personnel, including most of the 18,000 Marines stationed in Japan.
Okinawa’s strategic location near Taiwan, which faces persistent security threats, has made it central to US defense planning. The prefecture contains 70 percent of America’s bases in Japan, even though its land accounts for less than one percent of the country’s total area. Okinawa Main Island itself is about 66 miles long and averages only seven miles in width.
Critics say the burden might be easier to accept if US personnel showed greater respect for their hosts—and if Japan’s central government had not historically treated Okinawans as second-class citizens.
The densely militarized islands, particularly the areas occupied by the Marine Corps, have faced growing concern over crimes allegedly committed by US service members.
Residents also argue that special legal arrangements have, at times, made it difficult for Japanese authorities to investigate and prosecute American personnel accused of wrongdoing.
On Wednesday, the US military announced a 48-hour suspension of operations in Okinawa and prohibited alcohol consumption both on and off base. The measures were introduced as service members underwent training focused on standards and discipline.
Commanders also imposed a month-long nighttime curfew, describing it as a period for troops to reflect on their conduct.
“Discipline is our foundation—the habits we develop and demonstrate in our daily actions,” Lt Gen Benjamin Watson wrote in a letter to US military personnel in Okinawa announcing the restrictions.
Watson added that serving in Okinawa “comes with responsibility” toward local residents because “their home is our home.”
‘Every interaction with our neighbors either builds or undermines the trust that is essential to our team. When that trust is damaged, it affects the strength of our alliance and the security of this region.’ Lt Gen Watson said that US forces would fully cooperate with Japanese investigators.
His stirring words are unlikely to placate Japanese critics who say they’ve heard it all before from allies that many in Okinawa regard as military occupiers who have been allowed to virtually run amok on their island under a controversial 1960 US-Japan agreement.
The problem of American servicemen committing crimes in Okinawa, especially rape, has caused tension for decades but is only growing, according to local police. They say that crimes involving US military personnel have risen from around 40 in 2020 to 101 last year.
After a demonstration attended by 160 people in Naha hours after the suspect’s arrest, where one sign read: ‘We’ve had enough of this!’ – the protests rapidly spread to Tokyo.
Protests have rapidly spread to Tokyo with many fed up about the killing of Japanese civilians by US servicemen
Lt Gen Benjamin Watson said that serving on Okinawa ‘comes with responsibility’ towards Okinawans as ‘their home is our home’
On Tuesday, hundreds of people joined one outside the US embassy, demanding justice for the murder victim and the elimination of US military bases in Okinawa.
Protest leaders, who held another demonstration outside the Japanese foreign ministry on Thursday, are also putting pressure on their own politicians, who have long been accused of turning a blind eye to Okinawa’s issues with its American guests.
The outrage has caused problems for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi who, amid rising tensions with China, not only wants to challenge Japan’s pacifist post-war past by increasing military spending but also wants to increase defense cooperation with the US. She has plans to add more Japanese troops, missiles and radar towers to already considerable forces on the Okinawan islands.
Instead, she has been forced by the outcry over the murder to turn on her US ally, calling the killing ‘exceptionally brutal and vicious.’
She said Japan had lodged a strong protest with Washington and has ‘demanded their full cooperation in the investigation, the tightening of discipline of US military personnel, and thorough measures to prevent the occurrence of such an incident.’
The Prime Minister met with Okinawa governor Genta Koja who, although he stood against an anti-war rival in a recent election for his post, told her the killing has caused ‘great anxiety’ among Okinawans and was ‘absolutely unforgivable.’
He also told her that attempts by the US military to improve discipline among servicemen there ‘are not working’ and he lodged his own formal protest over the killing with the US Consul General on the island.
‘This case involves a 20-year-old Marine, quite a young person,’ said the governor. ‘I want to ask detailed questions about their initial training program and the management procedures in place for their assignments to Okinawa and seek measures to prevent similar crimes.’
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A 2023 poll found that seven in ten Okinawans feel that the concentration of US bases on their islands is ‘unfair’ but also revealed that young Japanese are becoming more resigned to the heavy military presence.
The issue dates back to the end of the Second World War when the US first occupied Japan and has been festering ever since. Thanks to its strategic importance for staging operations and isolation from mainland Japan, the American military stayed on in Okinawa long after it had relinquished control of the rest of the country, with its military rule only ending in 1972.
One of the main objectives of the US occupation was to defang the formidable Japanese armed forces. In 1960, the two countries signed a defense treaty which established 76 exclusively US military bases in Japan, of which 31 are now in Okinawa.
The Marine Corps, whose 13 bases occupy an imposing 50 square miles of Okinawa, was forced to move to the islands in the 1950s following protests about foreign combat troops being stationed in mainland Japan.
Defense experts have long noted that these marines don’t provide much deterrence to Japan’s adversaries, but others say they’re really there to suit Washington not Tokyo.
The US has used Okinawa as a launch pad for military – and particularly covert – operations around the world. It also saves a lot of money keeping its troops there rather than in the US because Japan pays an eye-watering amount – more than $1.3 billion – every year towards the cost of maintaining a US military presence.
On Tuesday, hundreds of people gathered outside the US embassy, demanding justice for the murder victim and the elimination of US military bases in Okinawa
US Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Benjamin T. Watson, left, Lt Gen Watson said that US forces would fully cooperate with Japanese investigators
A 2023 poll found that seven in ten Okinawans feel that the concentration of US bases on their islands is ‘unfair’ but also revealed that young Japanese are becoming more resigned to the heavy military presence
Finally, say critics, Okinawa is far removed from the concerns of Japan’s leaders, allowing the Pentagon to turn the islands into one big military training ground where they can train and test weapons to an extent that wouldn’t be tolerated in mainland Japan.
Most Okinawans are ethnically distinct from their fellow Japanese and say they’ve long been subjected to political and economic discrimination. This, they argue, has significantly weakened their position in their dealings with the US which often ignores their complaints.
A particular grievance is a controversial 66-year-old deal called the US-Japan Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that gave special legal privileges to the American military serving there.
These included the US right to retain custody of an accused service member until they were formally charged by Japanese authorities – this reportedly allowed US military police to repeatedly spirit away GIs accused of crimes against Okinawans. The suspects disappeared, presumably transferred back to the US where it was never revealed whether they were ever charged in a military court.
And for many Okinawans, citizens in one of the world’s most law-abiding and safe countries, the violent crimes committed by US servicemen – and especially against women – lies at the heart of demands that the Americans leave their islands, no matter what the implications for the defense of Japan.
A 2019 study by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper found that in the 45 years after Japan took back governing the islands from the US in 1972, some 6,000 US servicemen had been arrested. Of those, around 10 percent were felonies such as murder, assault and rape. Critics say the true figure is likely far higher as many offenses never get to the police.
Notable past outrages have included the 2016 rape and murder of a 20-year-old woman by a former Marine who had been a working civilian on an Okinawan US military base, who was sentenced to life in prison.
In 2024, public anger in Okinawa soared when it was revealed that in that year alone, there had been eight cases of violent crimes by US personnel, including Marines committing robbery at a convenience store, and four separate sexual assault cases.
Among the perpetrators of the latter was air force member Brennon Washington who was given five years for the rape and kidnapping of an underage girl by a court in December 2024.
Last year, a Japanese court sentenced another US Marine lance corporal, James Clayton, 22, to seven years prison after convicting him of sexually assaulting, choking and attempting to rape a woman in her 20s. Prosecutors had asked for a 10-year sentence for Clayton, who attempted to use his victim’s ‘intoxication’ as a defense.
The judge said Clayton’s attack had been vicious, choking the woman for as long as two minutes during which time she sustained injuries to her eyes that took two weeks to heal.
Drunk driving, sometimes with fatal consequences, has been another serious issue for servicemen living in a country where people drive on the left.
In 2017, a temporary alcohol ban was placed on all US forces in Japan after an intoxicated Marine crashed his vehicle into a mini-truck, killing its 61-year-old local driver.
However, the crime that still resonates most sharply with people across Japan and caused protests that lasted months was the appalling 1995 kidnap and rape by two US Marines and a Navy seaman of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl. The schoolgirl had left her home after telling her mother she needed to go and buy a new notebook for school.
The three servicemen, who had rented a van before discussing ‘doing something crazy,’ spent four hours searching for a specifically school-age target before accosting their victim as she left a general store, pretending to ask for directions.
They repeatedly punched her as she tried to stop them, pulling her into the vehicle where they taped her eyes, mouth, hands and ankles.
For many Okinawans, the violent crimes committed by US servicemen – and especially against women – lies at the heart of demands that the Americans leave their islands
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has plans to add more Japanese troops, missiles and radar towers to already considerable forces on the Okinawan islands
The trio drove her to a beach training area where they beat her until she was barely conscious and then raped her.
The outrageous crime and the US military’s decision to invoke the 1960 law that allowed them to refuse to hand over the men for questioning by Japanese until they had been formally charged sparked mass demonstrations in Japan including a rally by 85,000 Okinawans to protest not only the incident but also US military bases there.
Just as there have been Japanese claims that some of the crimes have been influenced by racial prejudice, so the families of the three servicemen initially claimed they were the victims of racist Japanese officials because they were all African Americans.
The three servicemen were eventually tried and convicted in a Japanese court where they were sentenced to between six and a half years and seven and a half years in a Japanese prison.
Commenting on the latest protests against US military bases, Japanese academic Seijiro Takeshita claimed there was an element of NIMBYism in his countrymen complaining about them when they knew perfectly well that they were ‘absolutely’ necessary to the country’s defense of its sovereignty against Chinese and Russian threats.
However, he conceded that the terms of the SOFA agreement whereby the US could ‘basically take away its criminals from Japanese jurisdiction’ in a way that it was unable to do in NATO countries like Germany and Italy ‘is something that really frustrates a lot of Japanese.’
It appears, however, that they will continue to be frustrated. Defense analysts agree that the US military commitment to Japan has never been more necessary for its protection. For the greater good of the country, Okinawa’s pain is likely to continue.
