NAHA, Japan, March 15 (UPI) — A U.S. sailor has been arrested for alleging raping a Japanese woman at a hotel in Okinawa, local police said.
Navy sailor Justin Castellanos, 24, stationed at Camp Schwab in Okinawa, was arrested for allegedly taking the woman, a 40-year-old tourist from the mainland of Japan, from the hotel lobby up to his room and raping her.
Police say the woman was drunk and asleep in the lobby when Castellanos found her and attacked her at a hotel in the Naha, the capital of the prefecture.
Castellanos has denied raping the woman.
“If there is a need to hold someone accountable, they will do that… (the Japanese government and U.S. Navy) will do that in an open and transparent way,” U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said.
Okinawa governor Takeshi Onaga told reporters: “We are going to lodge a strong complaint against U.S. forces in Japan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Defense.”
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga demanded the United States “tighten discipline and prevent a recurrence of such incidents.”
U.S. servicemen in Okinawa have a history of sexual assault against Japanese women.
Three U.S. servicemen were convicted of abducting and raping a 12-year-old girl in 1995, and two others were convicted of raping a woman they followed from a bar in 2013.
