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© 2013 AFPHuman remains found at U.S. base on Okinawa
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© 2013 AFP
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WA4TKG
WOW!, No doubt they will make a tv show concerning this unfortunate "Case". Won't the "Writers" be PLEASED ? ( I HATE that tv show ).
StormR
Murdered and hidden in abandoned housing perhaps.
If it was a military person surely they would have been discovered missing by now so makes me think its a murdered local.
Bleuren
Just like the old WWII Bombs, Shells, and Ammunition we find all the time at Yokota. Speculation is wonderful..
TrevorPeace1
I think the United States Naval Criminal Investigative Service will do a good job of forensics, and the results of their investigation will be published in due time. Whether that 'due time' is suitable to some people's opinion is different from others' is normal, expected. It's dead, decomposed body in a dilapidated building. Watch. Listen, Learn. Don't jump off the judgmental cliff.
nath
I love the blind speculation on any crime story on the website.
Vernie Jefferies
Did I just see this episode of NCIS?
Elbuda Mexicano
So was it a man?? a woman?? Japanese?? Non Japanese??
StormR
Simple speculation is not allowed on here?
Being open minded is a great asset , if only more people were.
wtfjapan
can hear the speculation wagon now, Japanese national murdered by US marine, and buried on American base so J cops wont find it. get the marines out of Okinawa now!!
Yubaru
Which tells me you know little of what goes on down in Okinawa. There are "missing" American's as well, and until there is DNA testing done to identify, hopefully, the remains speculation about the who is inappropriate.
Louis Tan
Unlikely to be American. They are exceptionally thorough with their own kind oftentimes would sacrifice more lives just to save one. Very likely a local. A woman. Raped and murdered by an American soldier.
smithinjapan
Elbuda: "so was it a man?? a woman??"
Read the article; it states that due to the level of decomp they could not determine.
StormR: "If it was a military person surely they would have been discovered missing by now so makes me think its a murdered local."
Why? There's ZERO indication that's the case. If it were a US military personnel gone missing on a US base, it's likely they kept it in-house given the speculation (ahem) so much of the media here has whenever something on a US base goes amiss. Likely if the US were still administering the building and found the body, and it was a missing US soldier, we wouldn't hear a lot about it. Seems pretty clear it was a murder, though. There's not a lot of detail. I was curious about whether it was a local or US soldier as well and wondering if he/she was found in any clothes that might help indicate (ie. uniform), but it sounds like the body was stripped, given they cannot ID the person.
StormR
Yubara
So you are saying that there is no roll call or muster or perhaps no notice that some one is not appearing for their posted duty in the US military?
I find that hard to believe, I can understand in combat situation but not in a base in japan that there is no checks and balances that would show some one absent from service duty.
lostrune2
A squatter?
Olegek
Very strange. Military camp means strict order , something clean and tidy....
Human body ???
Chooky88
I love arm chair investigators. Come on guys. There's so amazingly little information from this story it is impossible to speculate.
Lowly
Yes, yes, speculation is nothing, ok fine.
However, if I had to pick, I'd say lostrune2 wins the well-done speculator prize for this article (so far).
Let's speculate some more.
YuriOtani
Speculation is fun! However I do not have enough information to make even a wild *** guess.
Tyler Vandenberg
I would hate to speculate, but I know there was an airman's wife that has been missing for two years now. She left a suicide note in the house ,but they were never able to locate her remains.
toshiko
DNA tests use advanced technology now. //////////////////////////////////////a long time ago, dental remains are used to identify known missing persons but if this body does not have teeth, ?. There are new types of x-ray machines that construct image of entire body from bone images. If US military experts are involved in investigation, I think (guess) these new advanced systems will be used. After all, Olympus created those body analysis machines are used in doctors offices and hospitals in USA. YuriOtanis is right. All we can do is Guess, Guess until more info is revealed. We are all amatuer speculator, like Yubaru pointed out.
Harry_Gatto
When facts are few, experts are many.
itazuke1
most likely a missing military dependent 1 of many
smithinjapan
StormR: "So you are saying that there is no roll call or muster or perhaps no notice that some one is not appearing for their posted duty in the US military?"
I don't think anyone is suggesting that at all, just that the US military might not want to make some international media report automatically if they found the body to be a serviceman or servicewoman. Just because they have not does not in any way validate your wild speculation that it is some murdered 'local'. We're also not hearing about locals who have disappeared in the area, are we?
OkiJoe
First of all, please understand that the remains, as the article states,was found "inside a former housing area at Camp Foster"; the United States and Japan agreed in 1990 that the American military would return about 4 percent of the land from its base installations on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. Since 1990, the base return-and-consolidation plan has been expanded to release 21 percent of the property the U.S. military now uses on Okinawa.
Any land returned by the American military to the Japanese government is no longer American property; it is sovereign territory. The "former housing area at Camp Foster" was vacated in April and Japan Parliamentary Senior Vice-Minister of Defense, Ryota Takeda, visited the area that was formerly Camp Foster for a ceremony to mark the new boundary between Camp Foster and Ginowan City.
The area the corpse was found is sovereign Japanese territory; therefore, the remains are under Japanese jurisdiction. So say it as much as you want... while the U.S. military is already assisting the Japanese, CURRENTLY this is not a U.S. case. Plain and simple.
As for a military not answering up at roll call, do any of you know or remember "Koza-shi?"
stuntleggs
For the uninformed, if a person in the military goes missing outside of say a flight or a military operation the military doesn't mount a huge search. They do a check of the person's living quarters, and other common areas. They then make a report with the local police and the person's name is added to a federal database of deserters. The military doesn't have the manpower (or the legal authority) to constantly search mfor the hundreds of deserters worldwide, especially when there are already systems in place to do the work for them. If the body discovered was a former military member it was probably assumed that this person just packed up and hopped a flight back to the states, which happens more than you would think.
toshiko
Thank you Oki.Joe for writing info.
Fadamor
When I first read the headline, I was thinking "Battle of Okinawa casualty". But seeing as the body was only "badly decomposed" and not "completely decomposed", that initial assumption is impossible.
@OkiJoe,
Not so plain and not so simple. One of the things we DON"T have to guess about because it is printed in black and white in the article:
YuriOtani
stuntleggs it is very typical of the US military to assume a missing service member is AWOL. There is the story of a young US Air Force member who did not report one morning. He was reported AWOL nobody bother to see where he could be. The night before he was working in a C5 fuel tank. Did they check the aircraft, no. So a few days latter the plane had a fuel inbalance. When they drained the tank they found the Airman, no one checked to make sure he left the fuel tank. Like my guy I think the US blaming the service member first is disgusting.
Dennis Bauer
How old was the building? is there a list of previous tennants? get cracking NCIS crew!
taj
I don't OkiJoe, and I didn't find anything via Google. Can you give another hint / search term?
YuriOtani
The building while old had US military people living in them up to a few years ago. Not bad houses but not new deluxe that US soldiers demand. Again not a clue to who or what the person could be. To blame the US automatically is not right.
Fadamor
@YuriOtani,
AWOL (Absent WithOut Leave) is not an assumption, it is a statement of fact. The service member is absent from their duty station and they had not been granted leave. WHY the service member is absent is a separate issue to be determined by his Command. The reason could be volitional (desertion, etc.) or non-volitional (death, kidnapping, etc.)
oyatoi
do any of you know or remember "Koza-shi?"
I don't OkiJoe, and I didn't find anything via Google. Can you give another hint / search term?
Taj,
I think OkiJoe was referring to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koza_riot
taj
Thank you, Oyatoi! I had never heard of that.
Yubaru
Did you notice I wrote "American" and that's it? You assumed military, that is your "bad".