【军武次位面】作者：军武菌
In recent days, the military mushroom has seen a piece of news that is actually not news: a US military stationed in Japan was sentenced to three years in prison for killing two people and injuring one person because of dangerous driving in Japan. But after the United States extradited this criminal back to China, it actually released him on the spot!
▲ Rich Alconis
According to relevant media reports, the US soldier who caused the accident is named Rich Alconis, with the rank of captain, and was once a weapons officer on the destroyer USS Benford. On May 29, 2021, Alconis took his wife and three children on a trip to Mt. Fuji. While descending the mountain, due to excessive fatigue, Alconis fell asleep directly on the steering wheel, drove the vehicle in the wrong direction on the road, and finally rushed directly into the parking lot of a restaurant, crashing into five cars in the parking lot in a row.
▲ Rich Alconis with his wife and children
The crash left a number of deaths and injuries — a Japanese woman and her 54-year-old son-in-law who had come to a restaurant with her family to celebrate their 85th birthday were seriously injured in the crash and died after resuscitation efforts failed, while her 53-year-old daughter suffered minor injuries and the occupants of the car were also injured in the impact. Soon after, Alconis was prosecuted by prosecutors in a Japanese court on charges of "negligent driving causing death."
In court, Alconis pleaded guilty, but argued that he was not asleep, but that he was unable to control the vehicle due to "acute altitude sickness" and "sudden coma" while driving. Moreover, he has offered more than $1.5 million in compensation to the families of the victims in an attempt to apply for a suspended sentence from the court.
However, the judge did not agree with Alconis's statement on "acute altitude sickness": The area where the accident occurred was only more than 300 meters above sea level! How could Arconis suddenly have any "acute altitude sickness" on a highway several hundred meters high, and it was so serious that he suddenly fell into a coma? Moreover, immediately after the accident, Alconis examined his wife and children who had suffered minor injuries in the car.
In the end, the court sentenced Alconis to 3 years in prison. Strictly speaking, this is already a light sentence; in Japan, the maximum sentence for causing death by negligent driving is seven years in prison! The death of two people in a collision is only sentenced to three years.
But as soon as this verdict comes, public opinion in the United States will be fried: You, a small Japanese court, dare to sentence our heavenly soldiers of the United States? What kind of thing are you!
Soon, Alconis's wife began to make a big fuss about this matter, petitioning the family, the regional government, the U.S. federal government, and the U.S. military, demanding that Japan immediately stop the "persecution" of her husband, and "acquit" Alconis, complaining in front of the major media, senior government officials, and military leaders, saying how kind and innocent her husband was, and how miserable her children were—that is, not saying a word about the fact that he killed two people.
Even US President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris personally came forward to meet with Alconis' wife and put pressure on the Japanese government to extradite Alconis to the United States in accordance with the treaty signed between the United States and Japan. Some politicians have even openly clamored that the US military personnel are in Japan to protect the Japanese! If Japan does not release them again, it will suspend all military cooperation between the United States and Japan and cancel all arms supplies to Japan!
Of course, these are all, and everyone knows that it is impossible for the United States to fall out with an ally like Japan because of a captain. Moreover, Japan's dependence on the United States is so deep that there is no choice. Besides, after all, the United States only said that it would extradite the prisoner back to the United States, and it is not unacceptable for him to return to the United States to go to prison.
▲ Don't say it's Japanese, even American netizens can't stand it
But the problem is that the Americans have no intention of keeping Alconis in jail at all. As soon as he returned to the United States, he was immediately released from prison on the grounds that "similar cases in the United States are generally only sentenced to about 10 months in prison", and Alconis has been detained in Japan for more than 500 days, so he should be acquitted!
It was a slap in the face of Japan.
The Americans who killed the Japanese in Japan cannot be judged by Japanese law, but must be executed according to US law! This is certainly a great shame for any sovereign country.
However, at the beginning, the military mushroom said that this fact cannot be considered news: as long as there are US troops stationed, such incidents are staged almost every day.
In Japan alone, the number of crimes committed by the US military stationed in Japan is unimaginable. Since the de facto military occupation of Japan by Allied forces in 1945, there have been a large number of criminal incidents committed by US military personnel, especially sexual harassment, rape, robbery, and murder, which have had an extremely bad impact on US-Japanese relations. To this day, demonstrations against US military bases still break out regularly in Japan, and many people demand that the United States reduce or even completely withdraw military bases.
How corrupt is the military discipline of the US military in Japan? There is no need to look carefully for military mushrooms, and a large number of cases can be cited casually.
On September 4, 1995, three U.S. soldiers stationed in Okinawa rented a van and abducted a 12-year-old elementary school girl. They tied the girls with duct tape and ropes, sealed their eyes and mouths, and then beat them, tortured and raped them.
▲ A photo of one of the prisoners
Soon after his release from prison, this scum committed the crime of rape and murder
The brutal crime was soon discovered by the local police, but the U.S. military refused to hand over the culprit. Such a move immediately drew condemnation from all walks of life, with 85,000 local people taking to the streets to protest against the US military's cover-up of criminals. Due to the great impact of the protests, it was only after urgent discussions between then US President Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto that the US military handed over the three beasts to the Japanese police. In the end, these three soldiers were only sentenced to 6~7 years in prison.
▲Okinawan people protesting against the atrocities of the U.S. military in 1995
In 2002, Michael Brown, a U.S. Marine Corps major based in Okinawa, attempted to molest a Filipino woman and snatched her cellphone. The woman then reported the incident to the US military base. Outrageously, in court, the victim suddenly changed her story and claimed that she was "voluntary", and after a police investigation, an "unknown person" had provided a large amount of money of 1.35 million yen to the victim, so her statement was no longer credible, and Brown was finally sentenced to one year in prison with a three-year probation.
By the way, after Brown returned to China, he was arrested by the US police in 2005 for kidnapping a 19-year-old girl, which shows that what a dog can't change from eating.
On January 3, 2006, William Oliver Reese, a pilot of the USS Kitty Hawk, was arrested after drunken robbery, assault and murder of a 56-year-old Japanese woman. Reese admits to killing himself, but says he "doesn't know" why he killed. Eventually, Reese was sentenced to life in prison and is still serving his sentence.
On February 10, 2008, a 14-year-old high school girl was kidnapped and raped, and local police targeted a U.S. Marine Corps sergeant, Tyrone Hadnot, based on information from the investigation. Hadnot refused to admit to rape, and due to the severe psychological trauma suffered by the victim, he was unwilling to provide detailed information and dropped the charge, and the Japanese police eventually released the sergeant. On May 16, a U.S. military court filed a lawsuit against Hadnot, accusing him of five crimes, including kidnapping and raping underage girls, but in the end he was only sentenced to three years in prison!
On April 28, 2016, a 20-year-old Okinawan woman disappeared after going out, and after a police investigation, a former U.S. soldier and current U.S. military base employee Kenneth Franklin Gardson was found to be a major suspect. Gardson took the initiative to lead the police in an investigation, confessing his criminal process, criminal methods, and the location of the body and murder weapon. He also claimed that he had a "compulsion to rape and kill women" since he was a child, and that the victim was simply "unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place." In the end, Gardson was sentenced to life in prison – and the U.S. government refused to pay any compensation to the victims.
Although in these cases, all the prisoners were eventually sentenced, and it appeared as if they were punished. But the list here is only a small part of the crimes committed by U.S. military personnel. Because of the bad impact of these criminal acts and the great resentment of the people, even the US military does not dare to excessively shield the criminals. But for some relatively minor cases, such as traffic accidents, theft, sexual harassment, etc., there will be no punishment at all.
Moreover, because of the "Status of Forces Agreement between the United States and Japan," the US military can refuse to hand over criminal suspects affiliated to the US military to Japan, but wait until the Japanese side formally prosecutes the suspects before handing them over. It seems that it is only a delay for a while, but in fact, because no one can be caught, it is very difficult for the Japanese police to collect evidence in the case. If you can't gather credible evidence, you can't prosecute the other party at all!
In fact, many U.S. soldiers dare to commit crimes against locals, especially women, because they believe that their actions will likely go unpunished, because of Japanese cultural traditions, victims of sex crimes rarely choose to report to the police. Even in this context, there are still a huge number of cases that have been exposed, and it can be seen that undiscovered incidents have happened I don't know how many times!
And that's just in Japan, South Korea, and other countries, where the U.S. military's criminal activities are just as numerous, or even more serious. Previously, the military mushroom had also issued a special article to introduce it. This is indeed understandable - compared to South Korea, Japan, an ally, is still slightly more advanced, and for some vicious cases, the face is more or less passable, and South Korea does not have this treatment. With this kind of extraterritoriality, US military personnel can run amok and do whatever they want, but it is very difficult to manage and punish them.
This kind of case has been happening all the time before, and it will certainly not stop in the future. As long as the US troops are not withdrawn for a day, the common people of Japan, South Korea, and other countries with US troops will suffer one more day.
▲ The Tenryu people in the Japanese anime "One Piece" turned out to be real