US commander say high crime rate a misperception (in Japan)

Critics of Korea in the Korea-related blogosphere liked to share their wet dream that Washington will get fed up with criticisms about USFK (United States Forces Korea) by parts of the government and the public and just pack up and leave. Complaints about USFK crime and pollution are particular complaints that rile them. 

Let's just leave Korea to its own devices and just shore up Japan, "our real friend and a true ally." 

Among many things that are ignorant about this view is that ignores that some Japanese politicians and members of the Japanese public also complain about USFJ (United States Forces Japan). 

This is enough of a problem that the USFJ commander Lt General Edward Rice has spoken up out about it:

The rate of off-base crimes committed by members of the United States military in Japan is much lower than the rate for Japanese in general, but a "misperception" that the opposite is true still persists, the commander of U.S. Forces Japan said Tuesday.

"We are able to keep the off-base serious crime rate for U.S. service members to approximately half that of the overall Japanese population," Lt. Gen. Edward Rice told reporters in a group interview in Tokyo.

Rice emphasized that "a balanced view" is needed to discuss crimes involving U.S. service members in Japan.

The unbalanced view is not just from civic groups (as is also the case in Korea), but from the government:

U.S. forces have been coming under particularly strong criticism from the opposition parties in the Diet, which now control the House of Councilors. In April, the upper chamber made a decision to reject a budget bill for host-nation support, the first time it had ever done so. The budget eventually went into effect in May because it had already been approved by the more powerful Lower House, whose decisions on foreign treaties prevail under the Constitution.

I have long contended that if the squeaky-wheel leftists who (under Pyongyang's tutelage) have for decades been agitating for USFK's departure were to ever succeed, the effort would be stepped up in Japan as well, starting with Okinawa, where anti-US NGOs work in conjunction with their Korean counterparts. 

And a US departure from Korea or Japan would be a disaster for US interests and peaceful democracy in general.