OCCUPIED JAPAN AND OCCUPIED KOREA

OCCUPIED JAPAN: BASES 

When we hear about "Japan" and "Korea" keep in mind that they are occupied countries run by corrupt politicians who we put in place and who are answerable to us, the USA.  We keep these puppets in power.

So when we hear bellicose statements from "Japan" and "Korea" we must remember that we are hearing our puppets speaking the lines we write for  them.  If we want them to say that "China is aggressive", then that is what they say.

Both countries are occupied and garrisoned by the world's greatest military.  Our occupying forces are capable of defeating any military or civilian resistance within those countries.

Those who have spent time there, as I have, know that we are not welcome and that our occupation is financially onerous and utterly shameful to ordinary Japanese and Koreans.  The Japanese, for example, resent the fact that their airlines are forbidden by statute to purchase anything but Boeing aircraft.

OCCUPIED KOREA: BASES

The Koreans, a warlike people, deeply resent the fact that their armed forces are under the command of the US military.

The Japanese, proud of their thousands of years of martial excellence, are sickened by almost daily rapes, assaults, and murders of their women, children, and young men.

Our troops there are protected from their laws by what is known by extraterritoriality, immunity from local law.  Here's what CIA analyst Chalmers Johnson has to say about that:


"Okinawa, Japan's most southerly prefecture and its poorest, has been the scene since 2001 of a particularly fierce confrontation between Washington, Tokyo, and Naha over the Japanese-American SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) and its use by American authorities to shield military felons from the application of Japanese law. To many Japanese and virtually all Okinawans, the SOFA represents a rebirth of the "unequal treaties" that Western imperialists imposed on Japan after Commodore Perry's armed incursion in 1853.


Japan's Asahi Shimbun also commented on the refusal of the United States to join the new International Criminal Court, which had just gone into operation in The Hague, as a sign that the US administration was determined to set new rules for the world, not just for Japan. It noted the U.S.'s refusal to abide by many international laws it had helped enact, its invasion of Iraq without legal sanction, and its belief that it was so powerful that it could act more or less as it pleased in international affairs. 

Okinawa, Japan's most southerly prefecture and its poorest, has been the scene since 2001 of a particularly fierce confrontation between Washington, Tokyo, and Naha over the Japanese-American SOFA and its use by American authorities to shield military felons from the application of Japanese law. To many Japanese and virtually all Okinawans, the SOFA represents a rebirth of the "unequal treaties" that Western imperialists imposed on Japan after Commodore Perry's armed incursion in 1853. On November 15, 2003, in talks with Japanese officials in Tokyo, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that he planned "to press anew for the Japanese government to relent on a long-standing U.S. demand for fuller legal protections for members of its military force accused of crimes while serving in Japan."  Most American press accounts avoided details about what this enigmatic comment might mean, including whether the American defense secretary was equally concerned about legal protections for Japanese citizens forced to live in close proximity to American soldiers and their weapons and warplanes.

As of November 2003, the United States had stationed in Japan some 47,000 uniformed military personnel, not counting 14,000 sailors attached to the Seventh Fleet at its bases at Yokosuka (Kanagawa prefecture) and Sasebo (Nagasaki prefecture), some of whom are intermittently at sea. In addition there were 52,000 American dependents, 5,500 civilian employees of the Department of Defense, and 23,500 Japanese working for the U.S. forces in jobs ranging from maintaining golf-courses and waiting on tables in the numerous officers' clubs to translating Japanese newspapers for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). 

This large contingent was deployed at ninety-one bases on Japanese soil, of which thirty-eight are located in Okinawa, where they occupy some 23,700 hectares or 19 percent of the choicest territory of the main island. Okinawa is host to some 28,000 American troops plus an equal number of camp followers and Defense Department civilians. The largest contingent of U.S. forces in Okinawa consists of 17,600 Marines, followed by Air Force pilots and maintenance crews at the huge Kadena Air Force Base, the largest U.S. military base in East Asia. Even without these unwelcome guests, Okinawa is an overcrowded island with an indigenous population of 1.3 million in a land area smaller than Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands."

So let's remember: Japan and Korea are not independent nations.  They are occupied and do the bidding of the occupier...