TOKYO, Dec.7 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada and the visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter agreed here on Wednesday to further talk on narrowing the scope of U.S. military base workers protected by the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA).
Under the 1960 pact, a bilateral pact that gives U.S. servicemen and civilian workers in Japan privileged legal status, the U.S. justice system, instead of Japanese courts, has the primary right of jurisdiction over crimes committed by U.S base service members and their "civil component" if the accused was "acting on official duty."
The Japanese and U.S. governments decided in July to "clarify" and narrow down the scope of the "civilian component," after a former U.S. Marine and base worker raped and murdered a 20-year-old local woman in April and evoked widespread criticism and anti-U.S. sentiment in the island prefecture of Okinawa.
The Okinawa people, however, demanded the SOFA to be drastically reviewed, instead of just being adjusted in a very limited way as the government now plans to do, and the U.S. bases be relocated outside the prefecture.
Okinawa hosts some 75 percent of U.S. bases in Japan while accounting for only 0.6 percent of the country's total land mass. Criminal cases involving U.S. military men repeatedly happened in Okinawa.
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