NAHA, Japan (Kyodo) - 
Prosecutors indicted a 20-year-old U.S. Marine on Sunday for robbing and murdering a woman in Okinawa Prefecture earlier this month as the case renews anti-base sentiment among locals burdened with hosting the bulk of the U.S. military installations in Japan.
Devin Ballard, who is stationed at Futenma Air Base, is criminal of killing the woman by wrapping a phone cord around her neck at a hotel in Naha, the capital of the southern island prefecture, and taking her backpack containing a wallet on Oct. 3, according to the indictment. The cause of death was suffocation, it said.
Ballard had previously denied the allegations but now implies partial involvement in the case, according to investigative sources.
The local police said they found Ballard walking alone in the city of Okinawa in the late hours of Oct. 3 and arrested him.
Hiroya Ishii, deputy chief of the Naha District Public Prosecutors Office, said in a statement, “In the trial, we want to do our best to make accurate arguments and prove the case based on the law and evidence.”
Following the incident, Okinawa Gov. Genta Koja has stepped up calls on the central government to take preventive measures, with locals already angered by past crimes committed by American service members, including those against women and girls, in addition to noise and pollution issues.
The Japanese government has lodged a strong protest with the United States and urged it to fully cooperate with the investigation and enforce strict discipline among its military personnel. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the latest case a “heinous crime.”
Japan-U.S. talks on preventive steps have also been launched to review the effectiveness of the U.S. military’s “liberty policy” that governs off-base conduct in Japan and joint patrols by U.S. forces and Japanese police, according to Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi.
The United States has around 54,000 military personnel stationed in Japan, most of them on the subtropical southern island of Okinawa.
According to Japanese media reports citing National Police Agency data, police handled 4,998 criminal cases involving U.S. military personnel and their family members between 1989 and May 2026. Of those, 2,447 occurred in Okinawa Prefecture, accounting for nearly half of the total.