How has this small island has come to host some of America’s largest and strategically important military facilities? The use of Okinawa by the US began before the end of the Asia Pacific war, when the US military expropriated Japanese Imperial Army bases on the island. Okinawa remained under the control of the US until 1972 despite US occupation of mainland Japan ending in 1951. The island was returned to Japanese administration, but the US continues to use the island as a military base today. However, the long history of military occupation has not been entirely smooth sailing.

Wikileaks has just released this footage from a US Apache helicopter killing a group of civilians in Baghdad in 2007. The clip shows the crew strafing the men from the air and then returning to kill the occupants of a van attempting to collect the wounded. The dead included two journalists from Reuters. In the […]