Word: airmen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
While the police continued their investigation, diplomats dealt with the fallout. With some 26,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines on the tropical island, Okinawa is the cornerstone of Washington's defense strategy in Asia. But Okinawans have long considered themselves pawns in a geopolitical game. In 1995, after three U.S. servicemen raped a 12-year-old girl, 85,000 Okinawans took to the streets to protest. Alleged crimes like the one last week just feed the sour mood. "How long do we have to wait until this ends?" asks Suzuyo Takazato, a member of the legislature of Naha, Okinawa...
...details of the alleged crime were sketchy, and unsubstantiated media reports were confusing, contradictory and downright inflammatory. First the incident was reported as a gang rape. Then there were reports that several Americans stood by while the rape occurred. None of that was true. But police questioned several airmen over the weekend. No charges had been filed by late Saturday, and the technical sergeant was not being detained. "We have escorted him in for questioning, and if he is indicted, he will be turned over to Okinawa police custody," said Marine Captain Cliff Gilmore, public affairs officer...
...While the police and the U.S. military tried to sort out the criminal investigation, the two countries' diplomats had to deal with the fallout. With some 26,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines on the 2,300-sq-km tropical prefecture, Okinawa is the cornerstone of the U.S. defense strategy in Asia. But ever since the Americans turned the island into a military fortress after World War II, it has been an uneasy alliance. The Okinawans, already estranged from the Japanese mainlanders who colonized their island and then brutalized them during the war, have long resented being used...
...declined in the early '20s, and Hollywood ignored the Japanese for two decades. The war brought them back, more virulent than ever. The ad line for the 1943 film China read: "Alan Ladd and twenty girls - trapped by the rapacious Japs!" In the POW drama The Purple Heart, American airmen are tortured and executed for not ratting their pals. War movies reveled in a grim picture of the superhuman, subhuman foe - propaganda at its most lurid. As Bruce Jackson, who had been a World War II marine, wrote ironically in 1995: "Japs, as we learned from the newsreels that accompanied...
...because the Chinese had our people in custody, and we wanted to get them home—at almost any cost. So we said we were sorry, and sent our regrets, and generally acted meek and mild and mollifying, and lo, none of our airmen were hurt, and all of them were returned intact to the flag-hung confines of Whidbey Island. And deep in the White House bunker, Dubya’s pollsters rejoiced...