US Marine arrested on suspicion of murdering woman in Japan

A US MARINE stationed on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa was arrested on suspicion of the murder of a Japanese woman, police said.

The suspect has been named as 20-year-old Devin Jacob Ballard, while the woman has been identified as 39-year-old Anna Yagi, according to The Japan Times.

Ballard “killed the 39-year-old woman at a hotel in Naha and stole her wallet on Saturday,” a local police spokesman told AFP.

He is stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa and is assigned to the III Marine Expeditionary Force.

US Ambassador George Glass posted on social media that he had spoken with Japan’s foreign ministry and Okinawa’s governor to offer “our sincere condolences and pledging full cooperation as the investigation continues”.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the crime “exceptionally brutal and vicious” on X.

The government has urged the US “to provide maximum cooperation with the investigation, enforce stricter discipline among US military personnel, and take thorough measures to prevent the recurrence of similar crimes,” Takaichi said.

Japan has also lodged a formal protest with the US over the incident.

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Public broadcaster NHK and other Japanese media outlets, citing investigation sources, reported that CCTV footage from near the scene showed a foreign man entering a room with a woman and later leaving with her belongings.

Police then found Ballard, who matched the description of the suspect seen in the footage, and asked him to accompany them voluntarily to a local police station where he was arrested, NHK reported.

He reportedly denied the charges.

The United States has around 54,000 military personnel stationed in Japan, mostly on Okinawa.

A series of crimes including rapes, assaults, hit-and-run and drink-driving accidents by US personnel have long sparked protests on Okinawa and have been a frequent thorn in relations between close security allies Japan and the US.

The 1995 abduction and rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three US servicemen sparked mass protests and intensified calls for a reduction in the US military presence on the island.

Last year, a Japanese court sentenced a US Marine accused of choking and attempting to rape a woman in her 20s to seven years in prison. That sentence was upheld and became final earlier this year.

In 2017, a former US Marine and civilian military base worker was sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a local woman in Okinawa.

In the same year, US Forces in Japan banned all personnel from consuming alcohol after a drunken US Marine crashed his vehicle into a mini-truck, killing its 61-year-old local driver.