Isle airman found guilty
of murder on Okinawa

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By Daniel Smith
Associated Press Writer

KADENA AIR BASE, Japan >> A military court today convicted a U.S. airman from Hawaii of premeditated murder for strangling a chaplain's aide late last year on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa.

Airman 1st Class Damien G. Kawai had pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of unpremeditated, attempted murder. But a panel of officers at Okinawa's Kadena Air Base was persuaded by prosecutors' evidence that the 19-year-old Kawai had carefully thought out the crime.

Kawai strangled 20-year-old Airman 1st Class Charles F. Eskew Jr., a jet propulsion specialist and volunteer chaplain's aide, and smothered him with a pillow in Eskew's base dormitory room on Nov. 17.

Kawai testified yesterday that the crime took place after he walked in on Eskew with another man. Kawai, who had also been sexually intimate with the third man, said he feared his homosexuality would be exposed if he hadn't silenced Eskew.

Kawai was also found guilty today of obstructing justice and stealing a number of personal objects, including a television, video cassette recorder and a DVD player.

Prosecutors today also presented evidence for the sentencing phase of Kawai's court martial. The defense is expected to do so Monday.

Kawai, who has been held in confinement since Nov. 19, faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment without parole, a dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of pay.

Kawai, of Pahoa, Hawaii, is an aircraft jet engine mechanic. He joined the Air Force in September 2000 and was posted to Kadena in April.

Eskew, the son of Patti and Charles F. Eskew Sr. of Great Falls, Montana, worked as a jet propulsion specialist at Kadena and volunteered as a chaplain's assistant there.

Okinawa, about 1,000 miles southwest of Tokyo, is home to more than half the 47,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan and serves as a key American military outpost in the Pacific.