Elanso

Today’s Mainichi WaiWai column summarizes a tabloid magazine’s investigation into the treatment given to members of the U.S. military doing time in Japanese prisons:

On June 8, 2006, a U.S. military prisoner in Yokosuka Prison was served a breakfast of fruit, scrambled eggs, a sausage patty, French toast with jam and cereal. His lunch comprised pot roast, boiled rice, asparagus, coleslaw and baked custard. And his evening meal, meanwhile, was vegetable soup, steak with tomato sauce, curry and rice, corn, macaroni salad and spice cake.

On the same day, Japanese prisoners at the same institution were served onion in miso soup, natto fermented soybeans, grated radish and pickled vegetables. For lunch, they got twice-cooked pork, bean sprouts and marinated fish. Dinner was a croquette, macaroni salad, miso soup with egg and salted cucumber.

And it’s not just food where the American military offenders are getting it better than their Japanese counterparts.

“They have individual cells about three tatami mats (around nine square meters) big and the toilets are Western-style,” a journalist tells Sunday Mainichi. “They also have their own TVs and are allowed to watch some American TV shows.”

The treatment is a result of an agreement made between the U.S. and Japan in the 1950’s, apparently “in consideration of the cultural differences between the countries.” While U.S. troops in Japanese jails are given about 4,000 calories of food a day — far more than the 2,620 calories other prisoners in the same jail receive, it should be noted that the U.S. government covers the bill.