The Marines on Okinawa and mainland Japan have been going through a difficult time. The alleged rape of a 14-year-old Okinawan girl by a staff sergeant set off an uproar. The Japanese protested bitterly to U.S. authorities. American officials apologized and, to show they meant business in regard to misbehavior, clamped a “restriction” on all SOFA-related personnel on Okinawa and two Marine bases on the mainland.

The situation is quieter now. Okinawan police have released the staff sergeant, saying the girl didn’t want to testify. (He still is being held by U.S. military authorities.) The restriction has been lifted for all, though servicemembers have a strict curfew.

Questions remain about the particulars of the criminal case, the extent of Japanese antagonism to U.S. bases, and the appropriateness of the U.S. command’s tough-fisted curtailment of off-base activity for both uniformed and civilian personnel. Those are questions for others to weigh.

What I would like to address is the principle of freedom of speech that should be afforded to members of the military community. For several years now, Marine officials have been skittish about servicemembers talking to the press on Okinawa. Reporters have been accompanied by public affairs officers during on-base interviews; they say that now they can’t do any person-on-the-street surveys at all, even if the question asked is as innocuous as “What’s your favorite movie?” This was not the case earlier in this decade.

In recent weeks Stars and Stripes staffers say they have not been permitted to talk with people on base about the rape allegation, or the restriction, period. When they were able to make contact, reporters say they determined that many people, uniformed or civilian, were hesitant to speak out for fear of reprisal. (More recently a good number of letters to the editor have arrived on the subject, most from civilians, including retired servicemembers.) I don’t know of evidence that there was any top-down censorship of free expression. But there have been instances of localized muzzling of individuals by superiors who apparently don’t believe subordinates, or the spouses of the subordinates, have a right to speak their minds:

A senior airman at Kadena Air Base took back an e-mail he sent to Stars and Stripes, saying he was told by his command that “I’d face punitive action for saying anything.”

A civilian employee of the Marine Corps Community Services told a reporter he was warned by his boss not to speak to the press.

A servicemember’s spouse gave Stripes her views on the restriction and said warnings later got back to her. She said her husband read her an e-mail from his command that clearly attempted to suppress contacts with the press. She said she understood she was vulnerable to being sent back home. Eventually, this spouse said, she was told there had been a mistake, no action was contemplated against her or her husband.

In fact, Marine officials stressed in a statement that no one had been punished for speaking to the press, and they affirmed the First Amendment rights of servicemembers, spouses and Department of Defense civilians. In the case of servicemembers, though, they added a qualifier: The free speech rights “must be within limitations set by DOD policies.”

There are DOD policies and there are policies of a higher order. As far back as 1990, U.S. congressional language dealing with the issue said: “This news [published by Stars and Stripes] must enjoy the full protection of the First Amendment and military personnel on the frontiers of freedom must enjoy their First Amendment rights."

As to DOD policies, a key directive is No.1325.6, from 1996. It says servicemembers’ “right of expression should be preserved to the maximum extent possible, consistent with good order and discipline and the national security.” Another passage that some point to as being more restrictive says commanders shouldn’t be “indifferent to conduct that, if allowed to proceed unchecked, would destroy the effectiveness of his or her unit.”

However, that directive has a narrow target in its subject line: “Dissident and Protest Activities Among Members of the Armed Forces.” Its key provisions deal with inflammatory or underground newspapers on base, demonstrations by servicemembers or others, and membership in supremacist or violent gangs. That seems a far cry from the kind of comment offered by folks on Okinawa lately.

Last spring soldiers of the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea went through some interesting training. They were learning how to deal with reporters’ interviews in wartime. PAOs acted as civilian reporters. Stars and Stripes reporter Erik Slavin was there to cover the exercise.

A soldier complained about boredom and the noise of a drone. “It’s his right to say that,” said the sergeant in charge. “It’s honest.”

Here’s another honest statement a private made to the real reporter: “I really don’t like the media. They don’t need to know my business.” Fair enough, and a pox on any reporter who harasses a soldier to speak when he doesn’t want to.

Another private had a different opinion: “What we do is everybody’s business,” he said. “I think everybody should know what’s going on back home. Somebody has a son or a daughter serving this country. They want to know what’s going on with their family members.”

That’s a thought worth preserving.