1945 Katsuyama killing incident

1945 Katsuyama killing incident
1945 Katsuyama killing incident
Location	Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan
Date	July 10, 1945
Attack type	Vigilantism
Weapon	Knives
Deaths	3
Victim	African-American Marines
Perpetrators	Japanese soldiers and civilians
Motive	To stop rape incidents

Last updated February 10, 2024

The 1945 Katsuyama killing incident was the killing of three African-American United States Marines in Katsuyama near Nago, Okinawa after the Battle of Okinawa on July 10, 1945, to August 13, 1946. Residents of Katsuyama had reportedly killed the three Marines for their repeated rape of village women during occupation of Okinawa and hid their bodies in a nearby cave out of fear for retaliation.^[1] The Katsuyama incident was kept secret until August 16, 1997, when the bodies and identities of the Marines were discovered.^[1]

Incident

In June 1945, Allied victory at the major Battle of Okinawa led to the occupation of the highly-strategic Okinawa Prefecture of Japan shortly before the end of the Pacific War. Reportedly, three African-American Marines of the United States Marines Corps began to repeatedly visit the village of Katsuyama, northwest of the city of Nago, and every time they violently took the village women into the nearby hills and raped them. The Marines became so confident that the villagers of Katsuyama were powerless to stop them, they came to the village without their weapons.^[2]

The villagers took advantage of this and ambushed them with the help of two armed Imperial Japanese Army soldiers who were hiding in the nearby jungle.^[2] 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]

The Marines were killed and, to cover up their deaths, their bodies were dumped in a local cave which had a 50-foot (15-m) drop-off close to its entrance. In the summer of 1947, when the three Marines did not return to their posts, they were listed as possible deserters. After a year with still no evidence of what happened to them, they were declared missing in action.^[1]^[3] 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.

Discovery

Kijun Kishimoto, a villager who was almost 30 years old and absent from Katsuyama at the time of the incident, eventually revealed the killings. In an interview, Kishimoto said, "People were very afraid that if the Americans found out what happened there would be retaliation, so they decided to keep it a secret to protect those involved."^[1] Finally, a guilty conscience led Kishimoto to contact Setsuko Inafuku (稲福節子), a tour guide for Kadena United States Air Base in Okinawa, whose deceased son Clive was also a victim of sexual assault, and who was involved in the search for deceased servicemen from the war.^[1]

In June 1997, Kishimoto and Inafuku searched for the cave near Katsuyama, but could not find it until August when a storm blew down a tree which had been blocking the entrance.^[1] Kishimoto and Inafuku informed the Japanese police in Okinawa but they kept the discovery a secret for a few months to protect the people who discovered the location of the bodies.

The Katsuyama incident was reported to the United States military by Inafuku, who informed then-Kadena Air Base 18th Wing Historian Master-Sergeant James Allender, who in turn reported it to the Joint Services Central Identification Laboratory at Pearl Harbor. Once the bodies were recovered by the United States Army, the three Marines were identified using dental records as Private First Class James D. Robinson of Savannah, Private First Class John M. Smith of Cincinnati, and Private Isaac Stokes of Chicago, all aged 19 or 20 years-old.^[1] The cause of death could not be determined.^[4]

Aftermath

No plans were made to criminally investigate the Katsuyama incident by either the United States military or the Okinawa police. Since the killings, locals have allegedly called the cave Kuronbō Gama (黒ん坊がま). In Okinawan language, Gama refers to a cave.^[5]Kuronbō (黒ん坊) is a derogatory and highly offensive word for Black people in Japanese.^[6]

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. 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.^[7]

Notes

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Sims 2000
1 2 Cullen 2001
↑ American Battle Monuments Commission
↑ Talmadge 2000
↑ "がまの解説". dictionary.goo.ne.jp. January 31, 2023. 沖縄地方や鹿児島などの方言。
↑ Talmadge 2000: "Locals call it Kuronbō Gama. Gama means cave. Kuronbo （黒んぼ） is an ethnic slur referring to black people."
↑ "沖縄県の基地の現状" (PDF) (in Japanese). Naha City, Okinawa: Okinawa Prefectural Office. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 9, 2021. Retrieved July 9, 2021.

Related Research Articles

The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, was a battle of the Pacific War fought on the island of Okinawa by United States Army and United States Marine Corps forces against the Imperial Japanese Army. The initial invasion of Okinawa on 1 April 1945 was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of World War II. The Kerama Islands surrounding Okinawa were preemptively captured on 26 March by the 77th Infantry Division. The 82-day battle lasted from 1 April until 22 June 1945. After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were planning to use Kadena Air Base on the large island of Okinawa as a base for Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands, 340 mi (550 km) away.

Okinawa Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan and has a population of 1,457,162 and a geographic area of 2,281 km².

The United States Forces Japan (USFJ) is a subordinate unified command of the United States Indo-Pacific Command. It was activated at Fuchū Air Station in Tokyo, Japan, on 1 July 1957 to replace the Far East Command. USFJ is headquartered at Yokota Air Base in Tokyo and is commanded by the Commander, US Forces Japan who is also commander of the Fifth Air Force.

Yomitan is a village located in Nakagami District, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan.

This article is about the history of the Ryukyu Islands southwest of the main islands of Japan.

Okinawa Island, officially Okinawa Main Island, is the largest of the Okinawa Islands and the Ryukyu (Nansei) Islands of Japan in the Kyushu region. It is the smallest and least populated of the five main islands of Japan. The island is approximately 106 kilometres (66 mi) long, an average 11 kilometres (7 mi) wide, and has an area of 1,206.98 square kilometers (466.02 sq mi). It is roughly 640 kilometres south of the main island of Kyushu and the rest of Japan. It is 500 km northeast of Taiwan. The total population of Okinawa Island is 1,384,762. The Greater Naha area has roughly 800,000 residents, while the city itself has about 320,000 people. Naha is the seat of Okinawa Prefecture on the southwestern part of Okinawa Island. Okinawa has a humid subtropical climate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">6th Marine Division (United States)</span> WW2 US Marine Corps formation

The 6th Marine Division was a United States Marine Corps World War II infantry division formed in September 1944. During the invasion of Okinawa it saw combat at Yae-Take and Sugar Loaf Hill and was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation. The 6th Division had also prepared for the invasion of Japan before the war ended. After the war it served in Tsingtao, China, where the division was disbanded on April 1, 1946, being the only Marine division to be formed and disbanded overseas and never set foot in the United States.

During World War II, the Allies committed legally proven war crimes and violations of the laws of war against either civilians or military personnel of the Axis powers. At the end of World War II, many trials of Axis war criminals took place, most famously the Nuremberg Trials and Tokyo Trials. In Europe, these tribunals were set up under the authority of the London Charter, which only considered allegations of war crimes committed by people who acted in the interests of the Axis powers. Some war crimes involving Allied personnel were investigated by the Allied powers and led in some instances to courts-martial. Some incidents alleged by historians to have been crimes under the law of war in operation at the time were, for a variety of reasons, not investigated by the Allied powers during the war, or were investigated but not prosecuted.

National Route 58 is a Japanese national highway connecting the capital cities Kagoshima and Naha of Kagoshima Prefecture and Okinawa Prefecture, respectively. With a total length of 884.4 kilometers (549.5 mi), it is the longest national highway in Japan, though it measures only 245.2 kilometers (152.4 mi) on land. The highway begins at an intersection with National Routes 3 and 10 in Kagoshima. From Kagoshima, it travels southwest along the first island chain that divides the Pacific Ocean from the East China Sea. From the north to the south, it has sections on the islands of Tanegashima, Amami Ōshima, and finally, Okinawa. On Okinawa it ends at an intersection with National Routes 330, 331, and 390 in Naha.

The 1995 Okinawa rape incident occurred on September 4, 1995, when three Black U.S. servicemen, U.S. Navy Seaman Marcus Gill and U.S. Marines Rodrico Harp and Kendrick Ledet, all serving at Camp Hansen on Okinawa, rented a van and kidnapped a 12-year-old Okinawan girl. They beat her, duct-taped her eyes and mouth shut, and bound her hands. Gill and Harp then raped her, while Ledet claimed he only pretended to do so due to fear of Gill.

On November 2, 2002, U.S. Marine Corps Major Michael Brown attempted an indecent assault on a Filipina bartender in Okinawa, Japan. The bartender accused Brown of attempting to rape her and of throwing her cell phone into a nearby river; Brown denied the rape charges. The victim later recanted and attempted to withdraw the accusation, though prosecutors presented evidence that she had received a cash payment just before doing so.

United States war crimes are violations of the law of war which were committed by members of the United States Armed Forces after the signing of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the signing of the Geneva Conventions. The United States prosecutes offenders through the War Crimes Act of 1996 as well as through articles in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The United States signed the 1999 Rome Statute but it never ratified the treaty, taking the position that the International Criminal Court (ICC) lacks fundamental checks and balances. The American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002 further limited US involvement with the ICC. The ICC reserves the right of states to prosecute war crimes, and the ICC can only proceed with prosecution of crimes when states do not have willingness or effective and reliable processes to investigate for themselves. The United States says that it has investigated many of the accusations alleged by the ICC prosecutors as having occurred in Afghanistan, and thus does not accept ICC jurisdiction over its nationals.

The 1996 Padilla car crash was a notorious incident that occurred in Okinawa, Japan on 7 January 1996. Lori Padilla, a member of the United States Marine Corps in Okinawa, was speeding in a car which swerved off the road, killing Rojita Kinjo and her young daughters Mitsuko and Mariko. The crash sparked outrage in Okinawa and strengthened opposition to the American presence in Japan, occurring only months after the 1995 Okinawan rape incident.

The Koza riot was a violent and spontaneous protest against the US military presence in Okinawa, which occurred on the night of December 20, 1970, into the morning of the following day. Roughly 5,000 Okinawans clashed with roughly 700 American MPs in an event which has been regarded as symbolic of Okinawan anger against 25 years of US military occupation. In the riot, approximately 60 Americans and 27 Okinawans were injured, 80 cars were burned, and several buildings on Kadena Air Base were destroyed or heavily damaged.

Rapes during the occupation of Japan were war rapes or rapes committed under the Allied military occupation of Japan. Allied troops committed a number of rapes during the Battle of Okinawa during the last months of the Pacific War and the subsequent occupation of Japan. The Allies occupied Japan until 1952 following the end of World War II and Okinawa Prefecture remained under US governance for two decades after. Estimates of the incidence of sexual violence by Allied occupation personnel differ considerably.

<i>China Marine</i> (memoir) Book by Eugene Sledge

China Marine: An Infantryman's Life after World War II is the second memoir written by United States Marine Corporal Eugene B. Sledge, published posthumously with foreword by Stephen E. Ambrose, without subtitle, on May 10, 2002 by University of Alabama Press It was republished in paperback with the full title by Oxford University Press in July 2003. This book is the sequel to his first, better known, memoir, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa and Ambrose identifies it as the only account of the Marines stationed in postwar China. It has recently achieved wider public recognition as credited source material for the 2010 HBO miniseries The Pacific.

The United States Military Government of the Ryukyu Islands abbr. USMGR, also referred to as U.S. Ryukyu Islands, was the government in the Ryukyu Islands, Japan from 1945 to 1950, whereupon it was replaced by the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands (USCAR).

The Yumiko-chan incident was the rape and murder of five-year-old Japanese girl Yumiko Nagayama, sometimes reported as Yumiko Arakaki, by American soldier ‌Sergeant Isaac J. Hurt in Kadena, Okinawa on September 4, 1955. Nagayama's body was found near Kadena Air Base during the U.S. occupation of Okinawa. An investigation led to the conviction of 31-year-old Sergeant Hurt on charges of murder, rape, and kidnapping. The Yumiko-chan Incident caused anti-American outrage in Okinawa and contributed to the first major Okinawan protests against the U.S. occupation and military presence.

Over the last five decades there have been various plans for the relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, a United States Marine Corps base located within the urban area of Ginowan City in Okinawa, Japan. The current proposal for a new site in Henoko Bay, Nago, has faced opposition from Okinawans and the local government who wish for the new base to be located off the island altogether.

The main island of Okinawa accounts for 0.6% of Japan's land mass, though about 75% of United States forces in Japan are stationed in the Okinawa prefecture, encompassing about 18% of the main island of Okinawa. Following the ratification of the revised U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in 1960, massive protests of US military presence in Okinawa followed across Japan with an estimated 30 million Japanese citizens participating, known in Japan as the Anpo protest movement. With such a strong focus of United States Forces Japan in Okinawa, residents face economic problems of the highest unemployment in Japan as well as struggle for investment from outside businesses. Immense public opposition in Okinawa is still met with difficulty to create change for Okinawan citizens, while 25,000 American troops remain in Okinawa.

References

American Battle Monuments Commission. "James W. Grimmett". Arlington, Virginia: American Battle Monuments Commission. Archived from the original on July 9, 2021. Retrieved July 9, 2021.
Cullen, Lisa Takeuchi (August 13, 2001). "Okinawa Nights" . TIME . Retrieved July 9, 2021.
Sims, Calvin (June 1, 2000). "3 Dead Marines and a Secret of Wartime Okinawa". The New York Times . Retrieved July 12, 2010.
Talmadge, Eric (May 7, 2000). "Okinawa legend leaves unsettling questions about Marines' deaths". Athens Banner-Herald . Associated Press. Archived from the original on April 12, 2015. Retrieved July 9, 2021.