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Japanese police investigate new claims of U.S. serviceman assault

Posted at 8:40 AM, Nov 02, 2012
and last updated 2012-11-02 08:40:24-04

TOKYO, Japan (WTVR) – Japanese police are probing allegations that a U.S. serviceman assaulted a teenager after breaking into his home in Okinawa, despite a nationwide military curfew.

Police in Okinawa could not immediately confirm the reports.

These allegations come just weeks after the United States put all 47,000 of its military staff stationed in Japan — both in Okinawa and elsewhere — under an indefinite nighttime curfew in response to the alleged rape of an Okinawan woman by two U.S. servicemen. The pair were arrested last month.

The rape case stoked already high tensions in Okinawa, which has seen angry demonstrations against the U.S. deployment to the island of the tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft, which local activists charge has a poor safety record.

Okinawa is home to around half of the U.S. troops stationed in Japan under a treaty signed after World War II, when Tokyo was stripped of the right to wage war.