Shut Down All Foreign Military Bases,
Especially US Bases on Okinawa
Geoff Holland
(October 5, 2026) — Question for ChatGPT: How many women and girls have been raped and/or murdered by US military personnel in Okinawa since 1945? Please list.
ChatGPT
There is no reliable single number for how many women and girls in Okinawa have been raped and/or murdered by U.S. military personnel since 1945. The historical record is incomplete, especially for the U.S. occupation period (1945–1972), and rape was substantially underreported.
What can be said with reasonable confidence is:
- A study by Okinawan women’s organizations compiled approximately 1,000 cases of sexual violence by U.S. military personnel from April 1945 through December 2021, involving around 900 women and girls. The compilers explicitly say this is incomplete and that the “dark figure” of unreported cases is likely much larger.
- Another account of the same historical material describes about 350 documented sex crimes since 1945in an earlier compilation.
- For the first five years of U.S. occupation, historian Toshiyuki Tanaka identified 76 reported cases of rape or rape-murder. He considered that a substantial undercount.
- From 1972 through 2025, Okinawa Prefecture records 600 arrests for “felonious offenses” such as murder and rapeinvolving U.S.-military-affiliated personnel; that category includes crimes against both sexes and therefore is not a count of female rape/murder victims.
- A historical compilation reported at least 34 murders by U.S. military personnel from 1955 onward, of which 23 victims were Okinawan women or girls(plus one woman serving in the U.S. military). That figure was published in 1997, so it does not include subsequent cases.
Documented cases involving women and girls
The following is not a complete list; many victims were never publicly named. I have included cases for which I can find reasonably solid documentation.
YearVictimWhat is documented
1945
Numerous unnamed Okinawan women and girls
Okinawan testimony describes U.S. Marines raping women during and immediately after the Battle of Okinawa. In one Motobu-area village, historian Ōshiro Masayasu recorded testimony that virtually all the women were raped. These wartime accounts are difficult to quantify because the U.S. military did not maintain a comprehensive record.
1945
Unnamed women of Katsuyama
Three U.S. Marines were reportedly killed by local villagers after repeatedly raping women in the village. The incident itself is documented, although individual victims’ names are generally not available.
1945–49
Numerous unnamed women/girls
76 reported rape or rape-murder cases were identified for the first five years of occupation.
1955
Yumiko Nagayama, 5/6
Abducted, raped and murdered by U.S. Army Sgt. Isaac J. Hurt near Kadena. Hurt was convicted by court-martial.
1961
Unnamed hostess
Raped and murdered by two Marine deserters.
1966
Unnamed Kin woman
Murdered by an American serviceman.
1966
Unnamed hostess
Raped and murdered by a serviceman.
1967
Unnamed Okinawan woman
Strangled by a U.S. serviceman; he received a 35-year sentence.
1967
Unnamed Okinawan woman
Beaten to death with a hammer by an American serviceman.
1968
Unnamed woman, Yomitan
Raped and killed by an American serviceman.
1969
Unnamed 52-year-old housewife
Raped and murdered; perpetrator received a life sentence.
1969
Unnamed young women/hostesses
Several additional killings/sexual assaults were recorded, including the bodies of a 21-year-old and a 20-year-old hostess.
1974
Unnamed woman
A sleeping woman was beaten to death with a cement block by a U.S. serviceman during an attempted robbery.
1974
Unnamed 17-year-old
Attacked with her uncle by three U.S. soldiers; the uncle was beaten unconscious and she was gang-raped.
1975
Two unnamed junior-high-school girls
Two students were attacked, rendered unconscious and raped by a Marine at a Kin Town beach.
1985
Unnamed 40-year-old woman
Abducted and raped by two U.S. soldiers in Kin Town.
1993
Unnamed Okinawan woman
Raped by a U.S. soldier who subsequently escaped while in U.S. military-police custody.
1995
Unnamed 12-year-old Okinawan girl
Abducted and raped by Navy sailor Marcus Gill and Marines Rodrico Harp and Kendrick Ledet. All three were convicted.
1995
Unnamed 24-year-old woman
Beaten to death with a hammer by a U.S. serviceman.
1996
Unnamed Japanese woman, 29
Alleged rape by a U.S. Air Force security-police sergeant at Kadena; the case went through the military justice system.
1996
Unnamed woman in her 30s
Reported being raped at knifepoint by a man believed by police to be American; the case was investigated but the suspect was not immediately identified.
2016
Rina Shimabukuro, 20
Found dead after disappearing. A former Marine and civilian U.S. military employee was accused of raping and murdering her and led police to her body.
2019
Unnamed Okinawan woman
Killed by her former U.S.-military boyfriend. According to a subsequent NGO submission, she had sought protection because she feared stalking and rape.
2023
Unnamed girl, under 16
A U.S. Air Force member allegedly abducted and sexually assaulted a girl in December 2023. The case became public in 2024.
2024
Several unnamed women
Okinawa police reported multiple sexual-assault cases involving U.S. personnel; one involved a 20-year-old Marine suspected of non-consensual intercourse causing injury.
2025
Unnamed woman in her 20s
U.S. Marine Jamel Clayton was convicted in Japan of choking and sexually assaulting a woman and sentenced to seven years.
2026
Anna Yagi, 39
Current/alleged case, not yet a conviction: U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Devin Jacob Ballard was arrested on suspicion of robbing and murdering Yagi in a Naha hotel. He denies the allegation.
So what is the best answer to “how many?”
There are three different numbers, depending on what you mean:
- Rape/sexual violence:
There is no defensible exact victim count. The largest recent compilation identified about 1,000 sexual-violence cases and roughly 900 female victims from 1945–2021, while acknowledging that the real number is substantially higher because many assaults were never reported. - Rape or rape-murder during the first five years alone:
76 reported cases(1945–1949), according to Toshiyuki Tanaka—not 76 total victims for the entire postwar period. - Murder of women/girls:
A 1997 historical compilation counted 23 Okinawan women or girls among at least 34 people murdered by U.S. military personnel since 1955, plus one female U.S. military victim. Since then, documented female victims include Rina Shimabukuro (2016)and the woman killed in 2019, and the alleged 2026 murder of Anna Yagiis now under investigation. Thus, the 23 figure is demonstrably no longer current, but I would not claim a precise updated total without reconstructing the underlying case-by-case database.
ChatGPT Addendum
When ChatGPT was asked “Anything to add to this?” the following response was received.
ChatGPT: Yes — but I would tighten several points before you use it publicly.
The strongest correction is the scope: use “U.S. military personnel and, where identified, SOFA-status civilian employees/contractors” rather than treating every case as committed by uniformed personnel. Rina Shimabukuro’s killer, Kenneth Franklin Shinzato/Gadson, was a former Marine working for a Kadena-base contractor; he was convicted of murder, rape resulting in death, and disposal of a body. english.ryukyushimpo.jp
The near-1,000 figure is solidly supportable, but I would state it this way:
Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence’s 2023 chronology records approximately 1,000 cases of sexual violence against women from April 1945 through December 2021, involving about 900 women and girls. It is a documented-case compilation, not a prevalence estimate; the compilers and subsequent human-rights submissions emphasize extensive underreporting.
That wording has direct support. imadr.org
A few items to fix:
- The prefectural 600 is not “600 arrests.” It is 600 recorded felonious criminal offenses—a category including murder, rape, and other serious offenses—among U.S. military-affiliated personnel from 1972–2025. It is not a female-victim count. pref.okinawa.lg.jp
- Yumiko Nagayama is generally identified in the strongest recent account as five years old, not “5/6.” Keep the date and name, but cite the court record or a serious historical source. app.midpage.ai
- The 1995 entry should not say all three men were convicted of rape. All three were convicted and imprisoned, but the court found that Marcus Gill raped the child; Harp and Ledet participated in the abduction/assault, while Ledet was not found to have committed rape. The Washington Post
- Jamel Clayton’s case was a May 2024 assault; his seven-year sentence came in June 2025 and became final in 2026. “Choked and attempted to sexually assault a woman, causing injury” is precise. english.kyodonews.net
- The 2026 Anna Yagi item is current but must remain prominently labeled an allegation/arrest, not a conviction. reuters.com
I would also add a short methodological warning just before the list:
This chronology combines convictions, police allegations, historical reports, and advocacy compilations. It cannot establish a complete victim count, and it should not be read as a uniform evidentiary record. Each entry should identify its source and status—convicted, charged, reported, or alleged.
Finally, I would remove or hold the highly specific 1945 Motobu/Katsuyama material, the 1961–69 unnamed entries, and the 2019 entry unless you attach a source to each row. The older 34-murder/23-Okinawan-women-and-girls figure is useful, but it comes from a 1997 historical article—not a continuously audited official database. On The Issues Magazine
The 1974–85 Kin Town entries are supported in that same historical account, including the 1975 assault on two junior-high students and the 1985 abduction and rape of a 40-year-old woman.
