James D. Robinson, 20 John M. Smith, 19 Isaac Stokes, 19
Perpetrators
Japanese civilians and soldiers
Motive
To stop rape incidents
The location of the city of Nago (red) on Okinawa Island into which the village of Katsuyama has since been merged.
On 14 July 1945, three African-AmericanUnited States Marines were killed by the residents of Katsuyama near Nago, Okinawa. The villagers reportedly killed the three Marines after identifying them as the same Marines who had committed a series of rapes against village women following the Battle of Okinawa and hid their bodies in a nearby cave out of fear for retaliation.[1]
The killings were kept secret by the village for until 1997, when a Japanese employee of a nearby U.S. Air Force base was informed about the killings by an anonymous resident. No one was charged as all those involved in the incident had died and the statute of limitations had run out.[1][2]
Shortly after the battle, three U.S. Marines "on an exploratory foray" entered Katsuyama, northwest of the city of Nago, and raped a girl in the village.[3] Villagers described the Marines as "Black Americans" and that one was "as large as a Sumo wrestler".[1] From then on, the Marines returned every Saturday,[3] forcing male villagers to take them to the women, after which the Marines would take them into the nearby hills and rape them. The Marines sometimes entered the village without their weapons, convinced that the residents would not fight back.[1]
At some point, a group of male refugees hiding in the village decided to kill the Marines. With the help of the village men and two armed Imperial Japanese Army soldiers, who were hiding in the nearby jungle, the group planned an ambush outside of Katsuyama.[3][2]The New York Times interviewed elderly residents of Katsuyama, who described that the Marines were first shot in the narrow and dark part of a mountain pass, then beaten to death by "several dozen" villagers wielding sticks and stones. Shinsei Higa, who was sixteen at the time, remembers that "I didn't see the actual killing because I was hiding in the mountains above, but I heard five or six gunshots and then a lot of footsteps and commotion. By late afternoon, we came down from the mountains and then everyone knew what had happened."[1]
Afterwards, the male villagers dragged the bodies of the Marines up a steep mountain slope and the jungle, while the women cleaned blood off the rocks. On the mountain, the bodies were hidden in a cave with a 50-foot (15-m) drop-off close to its entrance, which was then sealed with rocks.[3] According to Hiromitsu Yasumura, who was born after the incident and learnt about it from village elders,[3] residents of Katsuyama called the cave "Kuronbō Gama" (黒ん坊がま). In the Okinawan language, Gama refers to a cave. Kuronbō (黒ん坊) is a derogatory and highly offensive word for Black people in Japanese.[4]
The Marines, who had officially been out on a routine detail, were reported missing on 14 July 1945.[5] In the summer of 1945, the three Marines were listed as possible deserters,[1] with a $50 reward for their return.[6] After relatives wrote letters to refute this in December 1945, a ten-month investigation declared them missing in action and considered dead the following month in July 1946.[6][7] They were all posthumously awarded with Purple Hearts.[8]
Knowledge of the killings became a village secret for the next 50 years, remaining secret for the duration of the United States Military Government and the United States Civil Administration, until 1972, when the U.S. government returned the islands to Japanese administration. However, the incident was mentioned in the official historical record of Katsuyama, published in 1978 by a local historical society, which described the killings as "tragic".[2] By 2000, all participants or eyewitnesses in the killings had died, but the story was remembered through oral tradition.[2]
Discovery
In 1997, Setsuko Inafuku (稲福節子), a tour guide for Kadena United States Air Base involved in the search of deceased U.S. servicemen, was informed by a male resident of Katsuyama. The resident, who was too young to remember the incident and remained unnamed in reports, stated that he had a guilty conscience after hearing stories from older villagers talking about the killing of three Marines and the disposal of their bodies. In June 1997, the resident and Inafuku began to search for the cave around Katsuyama, eventually rediscovering the cave in August after a typhoon uprooted a tree that had blocked the entrance. In September, the two informed local police, who did not report the killings to higher authorities for several months to ensure that the male villager remained anonymous.[1] It was thus presented that Inafuku had discovered the cave and the human remains inside by herself in February 1998 while hiking and that she had asked the Katsuyama resident for help.[2] After recovery though Okinawa prefectural police, the bodies were handed to U.S. military in April 1998.[9]
The cause of death could not be determined.[2] No connection to Katsuyama had been made yet and U.S. authorities, who announced the discovery of only two of the bodies, were investigating their deaths as homicides by either "Japanese agents or anti-American Okinawa nationals".[6]
The incident came to wider public attention after the Yomiuri Shimbun connected the villagers of Katsuyama to the killings on 26 April 2000, after matching the rumours in and around the area to the discovery of the Marines' bodies. As a result, officials in Nago were concerned that the story would "mar attention" during the G8 summit held in the city in July.[2][9]
Aftermath
The New York Times wrote that it was not definitively proven whether the three Marines killed by villagers were the same ones responsible for the rapes.[1] The families of the deceased Marines voiced doubt that their relatives were capable of committing rape.[2]The New York Times reached out to contact surviving members of the 37th Marine Depot, but the Montford Point Marine Association stated that none were willing to be interviewed.[1]
Although a probe into the deaths had been announced in April 2000,[5] no plans were made to criminally investigate the Katsuyama incident by either the United States military or the Okinawa police.[1]
The Katsuyama incident has been seen by opponents of U.S. military presence in Okinawa as one of many examples of misconduct by American personnel against Okinawans since the islands were first occupied after the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. Steve Rabson, Professor of East Asian Studies at Brown University, estimated that as many as 10,000 such instances of rape occurred after the war.[1] Under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, the United States Forces Japan has maintained a large military presence in Okinawa: 27,000 personnel, including 15,000 Marines, contingents from the Army, United States Navy, United States Air Force, and their 22,000 family members.[13]
↑Talmadge 2000: "Locals call it ''Kurombo Gama.'' [sic] Gama means cave. Kurombo is a Japanese word for blacks so derogatory it is banned from publication or public discourse."
12Mulvaney, Robert; Private First Class (PFC) James Destoy Robinson, United States Marine Corps Reserve, Service Number: 861214, Stories Behind the Stars
12Mulvaney, Robert; Private First Class (PFC) John Morris Smith, United States Marine Corps Reserve, Service Number: 898022, Stories Behind the Stars
12Howard, Allen (27 March 2000). "Missing Marine home at long last". The Cincinnati Enquirer. p.11.
12Mulvaney, Robert; Private Class (PVT) Isaac Stokes, United States Marine Corps Reserve, Service Number: 957917, Stories Behind the Stars
↑"沖縄県の基地の現状"(PDF) (in Japanese). Naha City, Okinawa: Okinawa Prefectural Office. Archived(PDF) from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
References
Cullen, Lisa Takeuchi (13 August 2001). "Okinawa Nights". Time. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
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