Okinawans Rally after Arrest of U.S. Marine in Robbery-Murder

Naha, Okinawa Pref., Oct. 5 (Jiji Press)--About 100 people gathered near the Okinawa prefectural government building Sunday, in protest after a U.S. Marine was arrested in a murder-robbery case in the southernmost Japan prefecture.

Many participants voiced anger at the case and many other crimes committed by those linked to U.S. military bases in Okinawa, with one of them saying, "How much longer do we have to bear all of this?"

Okinawa police arrested Devin Jacob Ballard, who is stationed at the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma air base in the Okinawa city of Ginowan, on Sunday for allegedly killing a 39-year-old woman in a room of a hotel in Naha, the capital of the prefecture, and stealing her belongings on Saturday.

In Sunday's protest rally, organized on a proposal posted on social media, a woman in her 40s from the Okinawa city of Nago, who brought her 4-year-old son with her, said, "I feel it's a contradiction that a serviceman stationed at a U.S. military base in Okinawa to protect Japan has killed a civilian."

A woman in her 40s from Ginowan said, "I don't want to see any more people hurt."

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]