Base Politics: Democratic Change and the U.S. Military Overseas. By Alexander Cooley. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. 321p. $29.95.

Extract

On September 5, 1995, three United States military personnel abducted and raped a 12-year-old schoolgirl on Okinawa, an island in the Pacific that houses roughly 75% of the U.S. military facilities in Japan. After a month and a half of smaller rallies, more than 85,000 demonstrators gathered in late October that year to protest not only the crime itself but also the presence of the U.S. bases on this string of islands that sit a thousand miles south of mainland Japan. Despite the enormous tragedy of this incident, the widespread international attention it received, and the Okinawan governor's refusal afterwards to renew land to the bases, more than 48,000 U.S. military personnel, their dependents, and civilians remain today on the island, which is roughly the size of Los Angeles. Tragedies at other U.S. bases overseas have similarly not altered the bilateral contracts with the host nation. In 1998, for example, a marine airplane accidentally severed a ski-lift cable for a gondola in Cavalese, Italy, killing all 20 passengers aboard, but this incident did not negatively impact the presence of the U.S. military in that nation.