In December 2006, a court in the Philippines sentenced US Marine Lance Corporal Daniel Smith to 40 years in prison for a rape of a Filipina at Subic Bay, a former US naval base in the country.

Smith appealed against the verdict, and has since been taken into US custody pending further legal proceedings. Rumours of his transfer to other parts of the Philippines or even back to his home state of Missouri flared up from time to time, although he was generally believed to be sheltered at the US embassy in Manila.

us american military personnel in okinawa japan 130209 02 Two days ago, the Supreme Court in the Philippines ruled that Smith must be transferred out of his detention facility in the US embassy, stating that such arrangements were not "in accordance with the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA)" signed between the two countries.

The VFA allows the US authorities to retain jurisdiction over American military personnel accused of committing crimes in the Philippines. The US primary right to exercise jurisdiction can only be waived in cases of ‘particular importance’ to the Philippines, and the legal wording is ambiguous at best.

Furthermore, Article 5, Section 10 of the VFA clearly spells out that confinement or detention of convicted US personnel should be done by Manila. That Smith has been under US custody pending appeal for so long only goes to show that the agreement was signed on equal footing.

Crimes committed by US soldiers are not limited to a special region or country. In fact, they are rather rampant, ranging from Japan to South Korea, and from Afghanistan to Iraq.

In June 2005, Kim Myung-Ja, a South Korean woman, was run over by a reckless US soldier Jeffrey Bryant near Camp Casey in Tongduchon. While condolences and compensations were made to the victim’s family, no legal action was taken against Bryant. The US army in South Korea simply ordered the young private to perform corrective training to make up for his ‘mistake’.

In Iraq, Abeer Qassim Hamza al Jabani was raped and brutally murdered by a group of four US soldiers, who had also shot her entire family to death prior to the atrocious crimes. An affidavit prepared by the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirms that the monstrous assaults had been well planned.

As can bee seen from these cases, local women have always been treated as victims and spoils of wars, but the perpetrators have often been immune from prosecution by the law of the land whenever US personnel are implicated.

And this ugly legacy is particularly and acutely, alive in Okinawa, Japan.

A culture of violence

In 1995, a 12-year-old Okinawan girl was raped by three US soldiers. After decades of silence, the local residents finally decided enough was enough and mass protests were organised to call for an immediate reduction in US troop numbers on the island.

Okinawa only accounts for one percent of Japan’s total area, but is home to some 75 percent of US military facilities in the country. As many as 30,000 US soldiers are still based there.

Officially Japanese territory, Okinawa has its own unique history. This March marks the 400th anniversary of the invasion and conquest of the Ryukyu kingdom by the Japanese.

Up until then, the islands had been an integral part of a tributary system centering on China, cautiously maintaining their autonomy between the East Asian hegemony and an ambitious Japan.

us american military personnel in okinawa japan 130209 01 The Battle of Okinawa between March and June 1945 turned out to be the bloodiest conflict in the Pacific War, leaving as much as a third of the civilian population dead. In the dying days of the militarist Japan, Okinawans were reportedly forced to commit suicide or to kill each other, choosing death over surrender to protect the "dignity" of the imperial household.

Post-1945, the territory was put under US control. During the Korean War in the early 1950s, the whole of Okinawa turned lawless, with US soldiers raping and abducting women like grabbing trophies in no man’s land.

As in the Philippines, many illegitimate children were fathered by American personnel, while the women were stigmatised by the self-righteous, unsympathetic and conservative Japanese.

Okinawans continued to suffer until 1972, when the jurisdiction was returned to Tokyo, with the agreement that US troops be stationed there and the military facilities kept intact. This has been followed by scores of rape cases involving US soldiers over the years.

With such tragic history, little wonder that remnants of separatism are still noticeable in Okinawa, and it is the only place in Japan where an independence movement, though negligible, is still alive and kicking.

As in many other countries, the US military is made up disproportionately of poorly educated and socially depressed youths who are familiar with a culture of violence at home. Stationed abroad and exposed to vastly different social realities, these youths can easily go unruly.

The presence of the US bases around the world, coupled with Washington’s insistence on the immunity of its soldiers to local law, only breeds structural violence.

Both the US and Japan contend the military facilities are necessary to maintain stability and prevent the unforeseen circumstances in the Asia-Pacific region, but this clumsy argument can no longer blind them to the fact that more and more individual soldiers are prone to acting with impunity.

If President Barack Obama indeed desires a more mutually beneficial and understanding relationship with the world, he must, on top of other foreign policy goals, work on a better mechanism to address the issue and to punish crimes by US military personnel around the globe.