Americans show support to Okinawa after murder, locals ask “Why doesn’t Japanese news show this?”

03/06/2016 0 Di puntoacapo

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americans-apologize-05Americans show support to Okinawa after murder, locals ask “Why doesn’t Japanese news show this?”

RocketNews24 by Scott Wil­son

Many Amer­i­cans are show­ing up to sup­port Oki­nawa, but Japan isn’t talk­ing about them.

On May 26, a civil­ian employ­ee of the U.S. Kade­na Air Base in Oki­nawa was arrest­ed after alleged­ly admit­ting to rap­ing and stab­bing to death a 20-year-old Oki­nawan woman who had been miss­ing for almost a month after she went out for a walk at night.

This inci­dent has right­ful­ly caused an erup­tion of anger and protest by the Oki­nawan peo­ple, where the over­whelm­ing U.S. base pres­ence has long been a con­tro­ver­sial issue. Our deep­est sym­pa­thies go out to the fam­i­ly and friends of the vic­tim of this hor­ri­ble event.

How­ev­er, one dan­ger­ous pos­si­ble out­come of this event is the fur­ther­ing of an “us vs. them” men­tal­i­ty, and a mis­con­cep­tion that all Amer­i­cans in Oki­nawa are inhu­man mon­sters. Just like racial pro­fil­ing in the West has caused unjust anger toward mil­lions of peo­ple when only a few are at fault, Japan­ese media por­tray­ing Amer­i­cans as silent or com­pla­cent on this issue only incites more anger.

This is espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant when the oppo­site is true. Amer­i­cans in Oki­nawa are out in droves to show their sup­port for the Oki­nawan peo­ple they live with.

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