• By
  • Yoree Koh


Courtesy of U.S. Forces in Japan



“We didn’t’ really focus on Okinawa, we focused on the overarching alliance with Japan,” said Lieutenant Colonel Gregg Bottemiller, director of public affairs for U.S. forces in Japan. “We understand there’s a controversy there but [the purpose of the comic] is to give a basic understanding of what it means to have U.S. military forces in their backyards.”

The Japanese-language comic features two protagonists: an American boy called Usa-kun, coincidentally named after the acronyms of his home country, who buddies up with Anzu Arai, a bespectacled Japanese girl, during his visit to Japan.

The comic pivots around conversations between the two characters as they  “explore and learn about the U.S. military in Japan and its role in the U.S.-Japan Alliance,” according to a statement from the U.S. forces in Japan. The series is in four parts, with each issue focusing on a different military body: the Army, the Navy, the Marines and the Air Force.

The books are organized into three chapters with the first describing the general history of the alliance; the second hits on the U.S. military’s partnership with its counterparts in the Japan Self Defense Force; and the last chapter is a pictorial depiction of where the U.S. forces are currently stationed in the country. As well as the online version, the U.S. military printed up 20,000 copies of the first issue, which were distributed to the four Japanese Self-Defense Force entities on July 30, said Mr. Bottemiller. The entire comic series is expected to be released by the end of 2010.
