Two U.S. servicemen were arrested in Okinawa, Japan over the weekend for allegedly assaulting local residents, according to local media reports.
The Okinawa police arrested Tomas Salazar, a 25-year-old airman stationed at the U.S. Air Force’s Kadena base, on Saturday. Salazar is suspected of assaulting his girlfriend in a parking lot around 3:30 a.m. local time. He allegedly knocked the woman, in her 20s, to the ground and punched her in the face multiple times, resulting in injuries to her mouth. Salazar has denied the allegations.
In a separate incident, Gabriel Monize, a 21-year-old private first class from the U.S. Marine Corps’ Camp Hansen, was arrested on Sunday. Monize is accused of injuring a 40-year-old Japanese man by putting his hands around the man’s neck at approximately 12:10 a.m. The man was sitting in his parked car when Monize reportedly entered the vehicle and assaulted him from behind. Monize has denied the allegations and refused to take an alcohol test, police said.
These arrests come just days after senior officials from the U.S. Marine Corps in Okinawa formally apologized for a separate incident involving a Marine convicted of sexual assault. On July 3, Neil Owens, chief of staff for the Third Marine Division, visited the Okinawa prefectural government office in Naha City to express remorse over the case.
“We apologize for the anxiety this has caused the people of Okinawa, and our thoughts are with the victim in this case,” Owens said.
The apology followed the conviction of Jamel Clayton, a 22-year-old U.S. Marine sentenced to seven years in prison by the Naha District Court on June 24. Clayton was found guilty of attempting to sexually assault a local woman and injuring her in May last year.
Okinawa hosts approximately 70% of the U.S. military bases in Japan, despite accounting for just 0.6% of the country’s total land area. Incidents involving U.S. service members have been a longstanding source of tension between the military presence and the local community.
