OKINAWA CITY, Japan (AP) -- The U.S. military is investigating the deaths of three Marines whose bodies were discovered 53 years after they disappeared in Okinawa during World War II.
Mystery has surrounded the deaths of the three servicemen. The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported on Wednesday that some accounts say the three were killed by angry Okinawans after they assaulted local women.The Marines, Pfc. James D. Robinson of Savannah, Ga., Pfc. John M. Smith of Cincinnati and Pvt. Isaac Stokes, for whom no hometown was available, vanished in July 1945 on the southern Japanese island.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is looking into the deaths, said Marine Corp. spokesman Capt. Joseph M. Plenzler at Camp Foster in Okinawa.
The U.S. military originally declared the three men deserters after they disappeared but later ruled them missing in action.
Nothing was heard of them for more than 50 years, until workers at a U.S. base on the island heard the story of three American soldiers who were killed by locals during the war and dumped in a mountain cave.
Okinawa police investigated and uncovered the three Marines' remains north of Nago, 1,000 miles southwest of Tokyo, and turned them over to the U.S. military in April 1998.
The bodies were identified by the military in April 1999, and the bodies of Robinson and Smith were returned to their families. Stokes' remains have not yet been returned, Plenzler said.
The Yomiuri reported that an official history of the area says that three unidentified American soldiers near the end of the war were accused of assaulting women in a village.
Residents angry over the assaults then killed the soldiers and buried the bodies in the cave where Robinson, Stokes and Smith were later discovered, the report said.
Since there was no legal authority in place on the island at the time, shortly after the Battle of Okinawa, Japanese police are not investigating the crime, the report said.