Okinawa

THREE U.S. SERVICEMEN are in Japanese custody, charged with the rape of a 12-year-old girl on Okinawa. It is not the first such atrocity; it will not be the last, given the tensions bound to arise when 27,000 young Americans are concentrated on an overseas island. U.S. bases sprawl over 20 percent of Okinawa's land area and are home to 60 percent of the U.S. forces stationed in Japan.These figures should be kept in mind in assessing the outrage that erupted after U.S. authorities waited 25 days before handing over the accused servicemen once they had been indicted.

100 Years Ago Guests, visitors and callers From the Times social column: "Rev. Watson E. Holly was a dinner guest at the home of Mr. and Mrs. William M. Harman, Sr. of Howard county. "Mr. and Mrs. J. Frank Harman have been entertaining Miss Hopkins, of Washington, and Mr. Frank Taylor, of Hanover. "Miss Bessie Ruppert has returned from a visit to relatives in Washington. "Mrs. R.A. Hammond spent Monday in Baltimore. "Miss Eleanor Maynard and Mr. Harold H. Newman, of Baltimore, were callers at 'Rupee' Sunday.

DEFENSE SECRETARY William Perry's agreement with Japanese counterparts, after a year of negotiation, should provide a steady foundation for U.S.-Japanese security cooperation into the future. It will not end Okinawans' irritation with the U.S. military presence and with the central government's using their poor-relation distant island as a dumping ground for inconvenient realities. But it is well designed to reduce that irritation.The agreement does not scale back the U.S. presence on Okinawa so much as downsize the facilities to match current use. That entails giving back a fifth of the land the U.S. occupies, closing or moving 11 facilities, reducing noise from aircraft, no longer closing a highway for artillery practice and -- most exciting creating the greatest civil engineering marvel since the Channel Tunnel to move a noisy helicopter base offshore.

Charles L. Schelberg, a retired Eastern Shore banker and a World War II veteran who served with the Navy in the Pacific, died June 19 of pneumonia at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The Queenstown resident was 86. Mr. Schelberg was born in Wilmington, Del., and raised in Towson, where he graduated in 1942 from Towson High School. He attended Washington College for a year before enlisting in the Navy in 1943. Mr. Schelberg was a seaman assigned to the destroyer escort USS Abercrombie, where he was a member of an anti-aircraft gun crew and performed damage-control duties.

TOKYO -- The apparent rape this month of a 12-year-old Japanese school girl by three American servicemen in Okinawa has provoked an uproar in Japan, bringing calls to revise rules that critics say make it easy for American soldiers to get away with crimes and calls to remove American military bases.Seeking to quell the outcry, Ambassador Walter F. Mondale and Lt. Gen. Richard B. Myers, commander of U.S. military forces in Japan, apologized to Okinawa Gov. Masahide Ota at a meeting yesterday at the American Embassy.

Almost every morning, Ushi Okushima rises from her futon and heads across the street for a vigorous sunrise walk on a sandy Okinawan beach. Later, some friends join her for morning tea before she heads to her fields. There, swinging a 4-pound hoe, a barefoot Okushima will chop the weeds around her radish and carrot plants for hours, thinking about her menu for the coming New Year's festivities. Okushima turned 100 in August. "I never get sick, and my blood pressure is very stable," Okushima says.

AUTHORITIES are doing everything right in the wake of the tragic sinking of the Japanese fishing school trawler Ehime Maru, by the nuclear submarine USS Greeneville, Feb. 9. It is not enough. The Navy's investigation and the National Transportation Safety Board's separate inquiry must proceed with the greatest transparency. The search for the four students, two teachers and three crewmen lost at sea should continue as long as Japan insists. The trawler should be raised and returned to Japan.

On Memorial Day 50 years ago, the nation was in the midst of a poignant period, never to be repeated, of celebrating fresh victory in Europe without knowing that triumph over Japan was but ten weeks away. Scores of young Americans were dying daily in the fierce battles for Okinawa and other Pacific strongpoints.The Evening Sun, in an editorial, captured the mixture of relief in Hitler's overthrow and the dread of what lay ahead in the Pacific. "This year we know half the task is done," the paper declared, but then added: "We cannot dare tell ourselves that by the time another Memorial Day comes the war in the East too will have ended in final victory, but it is the deepest hope of all Americans that it will be."

100 Years Ago Guests, visitors and callers From the Times social column: "Rev. Watson E. Holly was a dinner guest at the home of Mr. and Mrs. William M. Harman, Sr. of Howard county. "Mr. and Mrs. J. Frank Harman have been entertaining Miss Hopkins, of Washington, and Mr. Frank Taylor, of Hanover. "Miss Bessie Ruppert has returned from a visit to relatives in Washington. "Mrs. R.A. Hammond spent Monday in Baltimore. "Miss Eleanor Maynard and Mr. Harold H. Newman, of Baltimore, were callers at 'Rupee' Sunday.

WASHINGTON -- The United States and Japan announced a sweeping agreement yesterday to reshape their military alliance, including reducing the number of Marines on Okinawa and the construction of a new generation of radar equipment in Japan as part of a missile defense system. After a morning meeting of the two nations' foreign and defense ministers, a joint agreement was released calling on Japan to accept more responsibility for its defense, and requiring the United States and Japan to further integrate planning in case of conflict.

Eugene Fressenjat "Gene" Raphel, a World War II veteran and surveyor whose clients for the past 55 years included the federal, state and county jurisdictions as well as numerous commercial firms and private individuals, died Jan. 7 of a stroke at his Monkton home. He was 90. Mr. Raphel, the son of a businessman and a homemaker, was born on Woodbine Farm in Upper Falls. After graduating in 1937 from St. Stephen School in Bradshaw, he began his lifelong career in land surveying with the Roland Park Co. In 1939, he went to work for what was then Whitman, Requardt and Smith, designing and laying out the railroad network for the wartime expansion of Edgewood Arsenal.

Charles Sumner Dawson, a pharmaceutical researcher and World War II veteran who lived most of his life in Baltimore County, died of heart failure Thursday. He was 87. Mr. Dawson was born in Scranton, Pa., the eldest of three children. His father, an executive for an electric company, died when Mr. Dawson was 5 years old, after a bout with the flu. His mother remarried a few years later. Mr. Dawson grew up in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, referred to as the "main line," and later graduated from Lower Merion High School.

WASHINGTON -- The United States and Japan announced a sweeping agreement yesterday to reshape their military alliance, including reducing the number of Marines on Okinawa and the construction of a new generation of radar equipment in Japan as part of a missile defense system. After a morning meeting of the two nations' foreign and defense ministers, a joint agreement was released calling on Japan to accept more responsibility for its defense, and requiring the United States and Japan to further integrate planning in case of conflict.

OKINAWA, Japan - In a Naha conference room, journalists from the Ryukyu Shimpo newspaper explain their unyielding objection to the 37 U.S. military bases housed on Japan's southernmost prefecture. The security alliance between Japan and the United States does not justify the crime, sexual harassment, noise, pollution, fatal collisions and other hazards caused by the bases and their inhabitants, they say. "We feel sometimes that the military presence itself is a threat to security and human rights," an editor tells a group of American journalists.

Almost every morning, Ushi Okushima rises from her futon and heads across the street for a vigorous sunrise walk on a sandy Okinawan beach. Later, some friends join her for morning tea before she heads to her fields. There, swinging a 4-pound hoe, a barefoot Okushima will chop the weeds around her radish and carrot plants for hours, thinking about her menu for the coming New Year's festivities. Okushima turned 100 in August. "I never get sick, and my blood pressure is very stable," Okushima says.

AUTHORITIES are doing everything right in the wake of the tragic sinking of the Japanese fishing school trawler Ehime Maru, by the nuclear submarine USS Greeneville, Feb. 9. It is not enough. The Navy's investigation and the National Transportation Safety Board's separate inquiry must proceed with the greatest transparency. The search for the four students, two teachers and three crewmen lost at sea should continue as long as Japan insists. The trawler should be raised and returned to Japan.

Eugene Fressenjat "Gene" Raphel, a World War II veteran and surveyor whose clients for the past 55 years included the federal, state and county jurisdictions as well as numerous commercial firms and private individuals, died Jan. 7 of a stroke at his Monkton home. He was 90. Mr. Raphel, the son of a businessman and a homemaker, was born on Woodbine Farm in Upper Falls. After graduating in 1937 from St. Stephen School in Bradshaw, he began his lifelong career in land surveying with the Roland Park Co. In 1939, he went to work for what was then Whitman, Requardt and Smith, designing and laying out the railroad network for the wartime expansion of Edgewood Arsenal.

AUBURN, Ala. -- The American tourist is the subject of legend, lore and some degree of reluctant affection around the world. Europeans and Asians may look down on us in some ways, but they're glad for the prosperity that comes with private spending.Not so with the U.S. troops. In almost every country, they are stirring up public controversy. People claim U.S. soldiers are so rowdy as to be culturally disruptive. Not even the Yankee dollar can paper over that fact. With U.S. troops come crime, social dislocation and cultural mayhem.

TOKYO -- Prince Tsuguru Sho is too busy keeping tabs on his Tokyo bar and restaurant to let his mind fill with idle thoughts. There are tables to set, customers to seat and food to serve. There is little time to pause and wonder what life would be like if his royal domain stretched beyond the four walls of his basement business.Most customers at Sho's Zen restaurant, down the street from Japan's Imperial Palace, do not know that he is of royal blood. Few have heard of the great Sho kings, who reigned for more than 400 years without a standing army.