Later this week Obama heads to Japan. He will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, where the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb toward the end of World War II. The governor of Okinawa, which houses about two-thirds of the 50,000 U.S. troops currently stationed in Japan, has requested a direct meeting with Obama. The request by Takeshi Onaga, who was elected on a platform of removing a U.S. airbase from the island, comes after last week’s arrest of a former marine for the murder of a Japanese woman. For decades, Okinawa residents have called for the expulsion of U.S. troops in large part over a history of sexual assaults. The governor spoke on Monday.

Gov. Takeshi Onaga: “Over the last several years, we have heard nearly a hundred times that there will be a full enforcement of discipline and a thorough plan to prevent this from happening again, but the reality is that nothing has changed.”