It is year 2001. I see on the news that the local Seoul municipal government had to spend its own money cleaning up the oil spill at the Yongsan Army Garrison. It was known for 10 years, apprently. When I was entering middle school in 2006, the United States forces in Korea claimed that it was fixed, but the pollution worsened. My parents protested against the base's presence in 2002 after the US military killed two high school students walking home from school and the killers were acquitted. The girls were not much older than my older sister at the time. In 2025, you will see people on websites like Reddit that so badly wants to acquit the two civilian murderers while painting the Korean people rising up to protest against the occupiers as "political hijacking of a tragedy."
In december 2012, fresh off my first semester off from a university in the USA, I am visiting my grand aunt in Niigata. On the TV, there's a panel show discussing the US proposed military's removal of 9,000 marines, an agreement that was reached in april. As of 2024, it hasn't fully happened. In 2024, however, I do see on the TV that the presidential hopeful Kamala Harris secured the release of a yank soldier that ran over 2 Japanese civilians with his car from jail. One of the leading news casters in the mainstream USA network TV calls this a great victory for justice.
In 2019, I am starting my second MA in Oʻahu in Hawaiʻi. I lived in Aiea, 20 minutes by drive (45 minutes with traffic but let's not get into that) away from University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, but only 5 minutes from a military base, at a distant relative's basement-garage-apartment. There were some weeks where I was unable to use the tap water because the US military base would have its fuel leak directly into the springs where we got our water. In 2025, the only people ever indicted were 2 civilians for 1 of such incidents.
Starting my PhD program in Upstate New York in 2022, I am talking to one of my PhD advisors. She got into academia because she was from Guam and her people, despite the land being owned by the USA, have no political representation in the USA congress to influence what goes on on the island. She sees being in the academia as one of the few ways to at least try to introduce some local voice into the conversation. She talks about the fuel dumping that happens in Guam. We both share a sigh and a knowing nod.
Everywhere the United States' military goes, it leaves behind a trail of suffering that it will simply not address. It leaves a deep scar in every local community and the only people that the military ever demands responsibility from are the civilians they're occupying, not ever themselves.
