Girard Incident

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the Girard Incident of 1957, a Japanese housewife named Nakasi Sakai was shot and killed by an American soldier, William S. Girard.

On January 30, 1957, the 46-year-old Sakai was collecting scrap metal on a US Army shooting range in Somogahara, Gunma Prefecture, Japan. Sakai, a mother of six, earned a living selling scrap metal, and had entered the restricted Army area for the purpose of collecting spent rifle cartridges. Girard, a 21-year-old non-commissioned officer from Illinois, used a grenade launcher to fire an empty casing at Sakai, which killed her.

According to later testimony, Specialist 3rd class Girard had lured Sakai closer to him by tossing empty casings toward her, then shot her as a "joke".

A strong public outcry over the killing led to a jurisdictional dispute between the Japanese authorities and the US Army, and Girard's case went to the United States Supreme Court. Girard was eventually handed over to a Japanese court, which gave him a three-year suspended sentence. Girard returned to America with his Japanese wife soon afterwards.