The American military is looking into an American GI who had been accused of raping a woman on okinawa before Japanese authorities dropped the case.
A US Army investigator began the military equal of a pretrial probe on Monday into the allegations against a 25 year old specialist who works at Kadena Air Base on okinawa.
The soldier, who is accused of assaulting the woman in February in a love hotel room, is in custody on base but is not facing any formal charges on any of the allegations.
In May, Japanese prosecutors in okinawa dismissed charges against the soldier after not finding enough evidence of violence and intimidation in the claim. American Army investigators have pursued the case since.
The next step in the military legal process is a preliminary hearing by an independent officer.
The army has 4 months to decide whether to formally press all or some of the charges and hold a court martial, or dismiss the case.
Offenses against Japanese females involving U.S. troops have sparked anger in Japan over the U.S. military and its 50,000-strong presence, most of them on the southern island, about 1,000 miles southwest of Tokyo.
In May, a U.S. court martial found a 38-year-old Marine, initially accused of raping a 14-year-old Japanese girl February in okinawa, guilty of a lesser charge of abusive sexual conduct and sentenced him to four years in prison.
A U.S. military tribunal in Iwakuni, southwestern Japan, sentenced four Marines to prison for gang-assaulting a 20-year-old woman in the city of Hiroshima in October, in separate rulings earlier this year.