I think the majority of Japanese understand that this trio is not representative of Americans in general and that Americans don't condone this kind of behavior.
The Japanese that want the U.S. military out of Okinawa and/or Japan know this too, but love to use this case as a big stick to beat the military with. It truly is their Abu Ghurayb.
One would have to work very hard to hand the anti-US activists a bigger stick with which to beat us.
It is overflowing with irony that we deferred to Okinawan "justice" and it came as a sentence more in line with check kiting.
I would have proposed early release for the trio of rapists to be filmed by 16 video cameras ground-based and helicopter-borne.
From an altitude of 2,000 they would be released.
That there are no parachutes is a translation issue:
In order that the rest of the Marines and Okinawans get the message, it is being transmitted in the clear:
This excrement does not fly.