By DPA,
Tokyo : The US has dismissed an American diplomat over his reported disparaging remarks about people on the Japanese island of Okinawa, news reports said Thursday.
Washington replaced Kevin Maher, director of the State Department’s Office of Japan Affairs, with Rust Deming, a former deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Tokyo, Kyodo News reported.
The move came after his reported comments on Okinawans sparked outrage in Japan, aggravating the already-troubled relations between the two countries.
According to Kyodo, Maher told a group of US university students and professor in December that Okinawans were “masters of manipulation and extortion”, apparently referring to government subsidies Tokyo gives Okinawa in exchange for hosting US military bases on the island.
Maher, a former consul general in Okinawa, also said the Japanese islanders were “too lazy to grow goya”, referring to bitter gourd, a traditional vegetable on the island, Kyodo said, citing a written account compiled by some of the students who heard the lecture.
Maher had told Kyodo that his briefing was an off-the-record event and the account was “neither accurate nor complete”.
But David Vine, assistant professor of anthropology at the American University in Washington, and his students who attended the event said Maher did not say his comments were off the record, Kyodo said.
Vine got “upset” with Maher’s remarks, which he said were laced with “prejudice”, he was quoted by Kyodo as saying.
Maher spoke to the professor and his 13 students at a State Department building as they prepared for a trip to Tokyo and Okinawa in late December due to their interest in the issue of the US military presence on the island.
Maher’s lecture “has provoked the ire of Okinawans in many quarters”, the Ryukyu Shimpo, Okinawa’s local paper, said in its editorial.
“Maher repeatedly showed his contempt not only for Okinawans but also for Japanese culture and society, and laid bare the policy of giving precedence to the requirements of the US military,” the daily said.
As part of US efforts to calm the mounting outrage, visiting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell offered the “deepest regret for the current controversy” Thursday when he met with Japan’s new Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto.
Campbell added that US Ambassador to Japan John Roos was to arrive in Okinawa later in the day to offer an apology on behalf of the US government.
Okinawa, which makes up less than one percent of Japan’s land mass, contains 73.9 percent of the areas of exclusive-use facilities for the US military in the country.
Okinawans have long been critical of the US military presence and crimes committed by the troops. The 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US soldiers incurred the wrath of the islanders.
To calm their anger, Japan and the US promised to close a major US military base located in a heavily populated area on the island. But Tokyo had to build a replacement facility on the island to take over the base’s functions.
Yukio Hatoyama, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s predecessor, had pledged to locate the base outside Okinawa, which sparked vehement opposition from Washington. Hatoyama ended up agreeing to relocate the base to a less-populated area of the island.