John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY SAM NUSSEY IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“Trump Demands Tokyo Quadruple Payments for US Troops in Japan
“America still has 54,000 soldiers in Japan, wants $8bn a year for the privilege of having a staging ground to invade East Asia from”
Actually, Japan should demand exactly the reverse.
“You, Mr. Trump, must pay us quadruple if we continue to let you keep troops in Japan.”
There is a many years-long history of American troops assaulting women, raping women, brutalizing people, stealing, being vandals and being just plain careless, like the recent incidents of American bomb casings falling from the sky in a residential area.
Many in Japan - a country with extremely low crime rates and strong social pressures on behavior - would describe the American troops as thugs they are forced to endure.
After all, America's Army gets pretty desperate for recruits to fill all its imperial ranks. Standards only go ever lower in the effort.
And the American bases represent places Japanese people do not want to see occupied. And polluted. Heavily polluted.
Nothing is worse than the sum-total of American military pollution at a long-term facility. Some of the most polluted sites on earth are left behind by America's military in various places. They even do a poor job inside the United States.
Sludge and chemicals of every description. Radioactive materials. Old munitions and tires. Old electronics and batteries. Immense piles of every kind of trash. Sometimes even dumped vehicles and rusting drums of God-knows-what.
But the people are not really free to express that to Americans, and their current Prime Minister, Abe, is almost pitiful in his bowing and scraping to American interests.
It is quite shameful, even humiliating, for a country with such proud and ancient traditions.
It will indeed be a fine day when they can eventually shake off the occupation and speak with their own voice in the world.
But America is heavily embedded in Japan with corporate and government and military and financial interests and, I'm sure, plenty of bribery and corruption and pressure.
