In October, 39-year-old Ann Yagi was found dead in a Naha hotel. Shortly after, US marine Devin Jacob Ballard was arrested on charges of murder-robbery. But the Yagi’s killing reignited a decades-old question Okinawa can’t escape: Who pays the price for Washington’s military bases? Okinawan scholar and peace activist Keiko Yonaha joins Amanda Yee to lay out what the headlines leave out — countless sexual assaults by US soldiers and near-total impunity, a Japanese government that covers up case after case, and what Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s rapid militarization means for an island already marked as a potential battlefield. Yonaha also takes direct aim at the new Cold War narrative driving it all, arguing there is no “China threat” to Okinawa or Japan, that the story is being amplified by right-wing trolls and pro-government media to manufacture consent for war. The real danger, she warns, is the US strategy seeking to turn Japan and Okinawa into a frontline for war with China.

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