The American contractor had been included under SOFA despite holding a Japanese visa.
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“It’s extremely regrettable”, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Hagiuda told a news conference.
Under the changes, base contractors, now stated vaguely as “civilian component”, will be classified in more specific terms, to exclude from preferential treatment those without skills or and those who are residents in Japan, like the murder suspect Kenneth Shinzato, who is a resident of Okinawa and married to a Japanese.
The two governments are expected to announce a plan Tuesday to narrow down the scope of “civilian component” by improving the way the agreement is used. The pact defines it as “civilian persons of United States nationality who are in the employ of, serving with, or accompanying the United States armed forces in Japan”.
About 50,000 American troops are stationed in Japan under a bilateral security agreement and about half are based on Okinawa. Also in June, four American civilians at the Kadena base were arrested on drugs charges. The woman, Rina Shimabukuro, disappeared on April 28 and was later found dead in a forest.
Gadson confessed to the crime, though his attorney said he was under the influence of narcotics following a suicide attempt. Platte reportedly denied the allegation.
The current SOFA, signed in 1960, gives US military personnel and civilians employed at American bases in Japan immunity from Japanese criminal procedures in accidents or crime while on duty or on base.
That arrest came just two months after a Navy sailor was charged with raping a Japanese woman in a hotel in Naha, Okinawa’s capital. Police said a breath test showed his blood-alcohol level exceeding the legal limit.
The U.S. military today usually hands its servicemen to the Japanese side in serious crimes, but it’s not compulsory under the agreement, which the Okinawan authorities for years have protested as unfair.
U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, second from left, and Lt. Gen. John Dolan, commander of the U.S. military in Japan, third from left, hold a talk with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, second from right, and Japanese Defense Minister Minister Gen Nakatani at Foreign Ministry’s Iikura Guesthouse in Tokyo, Tuesday, July 5, 2016.
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It also amplified the islanders’ calls for their base hosting burdens to be eradicated and the USA bases kicked off the tiny island, which accounts for less than 1 percent of Japan’s total land mass. Other drinking off-base is still prohibited, AP reported.
