Task & Purpose:
The Navy is investigating allegations that sailors in Okinawa attempted to unlawfully convert Japanese citizens to Christianity through a public display inside a military hospital.
On Friday, Rear Adm. Paul D. Pearigen, commander of San Diego-based Navy Medicine West, ordered an investigation into U.S. Naval Hospital Okinawa, the Navy’s largest overseas hospital.
Pearigen is responding to a seven-page complaint filed with his command Thursday by the nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation on behalf of 26 service members or Department of Defense civilian employees and their families in Okinawa.
They allege that military leaders on March 26 placed a Christian Bible on a Prisoner of War/ Missing in Action display inside the hospital’s public gallery.