Squelching bad news in Japan

Washington Post : 5 March 2016

SO FAR, not so good for Abenomics, the ambitious program for reviving Japan’s stagnant economy introduced by Shinzo Abe upon his election as prime minister three years ago. Mr. Abe promised to fire “three arrows”: fiscal stimulus, monetary easing and structural reforms. He has delivered most dramatically in the monetary area, where the Bank of Japan has tried radical anti-deflation measures, including, most recently, negative interest rates on commercial bank deposits at the central bank. Yet in view of the underwhelming results — including another three months of negative growth at the end of 2015 — Japanese are worried and the prime minister’s approval ratings are falling. Meanwhile, China and North Korea agitate militarily nearby.

Surrounded by bad news, many leaders resort to blaming the bearers of it; alas, Mr. Abe may be no exception. In fact, formal and informal pressure on Japan’s media, by the government and its allies, has been a sore point almost since Mr. Abe took office. To many, his disposition to rein in critical coverage was behind the rise of a loyalist to run NHK, Japan’s publicly supported television network, in January 2014. The new boss promptly gave a press conference observing that the World War II-era Japanese army’s forcing of women into its sexual service “could be found in any nation that was at war.” Since then, officials of both NHK and a rival, Asahi, have been dressed down by a commission of Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, and a member of Mr. Abe’s parliamentary bloc has threatened two Okinawan papers’ advertising revenue. Mr. Abe apologized for that.

Recent weeks have seen the resignation of three television journalists, all known to be out of favor with the government, in circumstances suggestive of pressure from Mr. Abe’s friends in network management. The resignations coincided with a flap over comments Feb. 8 by Japan’s minister of internal affairs, to the effect that broadcasters who fail to show “fairness” in political coverage could lose their licenses, under previously little-used laws requiring neutrality in the news. The Japan Federation of Commercial Broadcast Workers condemned that as “intimidation.” Japan’s media remain powerful and robust, yet in 2015, Japan fell to 61st place among 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders’ global press freedom rankings, down from 11th in 2010.

Mr. Abe’s upset with the media seems to revolve mainly around their coverage — tepid by U.S. standards — of his national security policy, such as his plans to permit Japan’s military more latitude abroad. Japan does face challenges both economically and in the security realm. Mr. Abe is trying to modernize his nation to meet them, an inevitably controversial project. Nevertheless, the proudest of Japan’s post-World War II achievements was not its economic “miracle” but the establishment of free institutions, including independent media. None of Mr. Abe’s goals for Japan, however worthy, can, or should, be pursued at their expense.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/squelching-bad-news-in-japan/2016/03/05/497b7be8-da60-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html

 

Okinawa's Revolt: Decades of Rape, Environmental Harm by U.S. Military Spur Residents to Rise Up

Democracy Now : 16 January 2014

Nearly 70 years ago the United States took over the Japanese island of Okinawa after one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. More than 200,000 people died, mostly Japanese civilians. Today the United States operates 34 bases on the island and is planning to build a new state-of-the-art Marine base, despite mass protests. A multi-decade movement of Okinawa residents has pushed for ousting U.S. forces off the island, citing environmental concerns and sexual assaults by U.S. soldiers on local residents. Broadcasting from Tokyo, we are joined by two guests: Kozue Akibayashi, a professor and activist in Japan with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the Women’s International Network Against Militarism; and John Junkerman, a documentary filmmaker currently working on a film about U.S. military bases in Okinawa.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

 

AMY GOODMAN: We are on the road in Japan, broadcasting from Tokyo for the second of three special broadcasts. Our visit to Japan comes less than a month after thousands of people rallied on the Japanese island of Okinawa to protest plans to build a new U.S. military base. Demonstrators surrounded a government building and staged a sit-in inside. The protests came after local officials agreed to a deal in mid-December that will relocate one of the existing U.S. bases from a densely populated urban area to a more remote location. But a decades-long movement of Okinawa residents has opposed the base altogether and pushed for ousting U.S. forces off the island, citing environmental concerns and sexual assaults by U.S. soldiers on local residents. One protester explained how the presence of the Okinawa base caused a major tragedy in his family.

HIROTOSHI IHA: [translated] I’ve never been able to accept any soldiers to be stationed here. One of the reasons goes back to 1954 or ’55, when I was in eighth or ninth grade. I had a five-year-old relative named Yumiko Nagayama. An American soldier kidnapped her in a jeep in broad daylight. He took her to a field in Kadena and stripped her naked, then raped her, murdered her and discarded her body.

AMY GOODMAN: The United States has been using Okinawa as a key military site since the bloody Battle of Okinawa in 1945, when more than 200,000 people were killed, most Japanese civilians. The U.S. now maintains 34 bases and 18,000 troops on Okinawa.

For more, we’re joined in our Toyko studio by two guests. We’re joined by Kozue Akibayashi, a professor and activist in Japan with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the International Women’s Network Against Militarism.

John Junkerman is a documentary filmmaker living in Tokyo, currently working on a film about the U.S. military bases in Okinawa. His past films include Japan’s Peace Constitution, also Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with you, Kozue. Explain the latest developments in the Okinawa U.S. military base.

KOZUE AKIBAYASHI: As you introduced, there was a—there has been a plan to relocate Futenma air station of the Marine Corps to a remote area of Henoko in Nago city, and people have protested for longer than 15 years by now. The latest development for us, to our surprise, is that the governor of Okinawa approved the reclamation of the area, the planned area of Henoko in the sea area, to build the new facility, like you said, a state-of-the-art Marine Corps facilities in this beautiful sea of Henoko.

AMY GOODMAN: Was that a change of position on the governor’s part?

KOZUE AKIBAYASHI: Yes and no. This is his second term. In his first term, he was clear that the relocation was necessary. In his second term, and he’s up—this is the end of his second term, of four-year term. The second term, he said the relocation, the new base, needs to be built outside Okinawa, because people protested so hard for so long, and he realized that it’s almost impossible. And that was the will expressed by the people of Okinawa for several years by now.

AMY GOODMAN: John Junkerman, if you could talk about the history of these U.S. bases in Okinawa? It’s something you’ve been following for decades. Go back to why these U.S. military bases are there, to begin with.

JOHN JUNKERMAN: I think it’s—you really have to see it in the long perspective. As you mentioned, the U.S. seized the island of Okinawa in 1945 after a battle that lasted for two-and-a-half months, in which over 200,000 people were killed. Literally, the entire island was drenched with blood.

AMY GOODMAN: The size of the island?

JOHN JUNKERMAN: The island is the size of Long Island. It’s a very small—

AMY GOODMAN: In New York.

JOHN JUNKERMAN: New York’s Long Island. It’s a small island. And the U.S. seized that, and in the course—in the weeks after that, months after that, dropped two bombs on Japan, and the war ended. But the U.S.—

AMY GOODMAN: The atomic bombs.

JOHN JUNKERMAN: The atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war ended, but the U.S. retained its bases in Okinawa, at first not actively, just—it was a place where they could station large numbers of troops to maintain peace in Japan during the American occupation. But then, very soon after that, the Korean War started, and when the Korean War started, the U.S. engaged in a massive base-building campaign on Okinawa, which they had free rein of. The occupation of Japan itself ended in 1952, but the occupation of Okinawa continued for 20 years after that, in which the U.S. had full control of the islands and the bases on those islands. The island of Okinawa is very strategically located, so you can—from Okinawa, you can send bombing missions to Korea and to Vietnam and to China. And, in fact, the U.S. did use the Air Force base on Okinawa, the Kadena Air Force Base, as a base to bomb in Korea and also in North Vietnam.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, then, using it for Vietnam, was their opposition expressed at that time, and how did that go forward?

JOHN JUNKERMAN: Sure. And the thing about Okinawa—that’s why it’s important to see it in this long perspective—is that having so many civilians killed in that short period of time during World War II, the people of Okinawa have a very deep-seated antipathy toward military, toward the military and toward war. And they’re a very deeply pacifist people. They’ve tolerated the U.S. military presence out of—you know, out of—because they had no choice for many, many years, but it rankled them, and it went against their own spirits and their own conscience to be involved in U.S. wars in Asia. They didn’t like that, and there was very strong opposition during those years.

Then Okinawa mounted a campaign to be returned to Japan, in the hope that because Japan has a peace constitution, they would be returned to Japan, and the bases would be removed. They would become like the rest of Japan, where the peace constitution was in effect. Japan—Okinawa did revert to Japan in 1972, but the bases remained. They were not removed whatsoever. In fact, the percentage of bases in the country of Japan, the representative U.S. bases on Okinawa has increased since that time. So there’s a concentration of—almost 75 percent of the American presence in Japan is concentrated on this island that constitutes 0.6 percent of the landmass of Japan.

AMY GOODMAN: Kozue Akibayashi, explain what happened in the 1990s with the rape scandal that led to intensification of the opposition to U.S. bases.

KOZUE AKIBAYASHI: The 1995 rape, the world—very widely reported rape, and it’s often cited as a trigger of the island-wide protest. I do hesitate to characterize the incident that way, because women’s movement with whom I have been working with for 15, 17 years by now, they first—they were the ones who first raised their voice in public to call for more attention to the history, long history, of sexual violence. The 1995 rape is not the only one. It was—because of the courage of the young victim, it was reported to the police, and it was reported in Okinawa, and the people knew about that. And that, in fact, led the wide rage among Okinawan people that enough is enough, because they had had enough sexual violence cases, but other violence cases against people in Okinawa by the soldiers.

AMY GOODMAN: Why was 1995 such a key trigger, given, as you said, that this was certainly not the only rape?

KOZUE AKIBAYASHI: I think people that—

AMY GOODMAN: The girl in this case was 12 years old?

KOZUE AKIBAYASHI: Yes, yes. And she said—she reported—because our criminal justice system required the victims to report to the case to be open, and she reported that, and she said she didn’t want any more victims like her, so I reported it. And so, that attracted more public support for protection of the women and children, who are more damaged and sacrificed, almost, because of the—because keeping the U.S. military on their island, and the reason is for security. They always get this reason: "Well, because of the security of the region, security of Japan, we need to have U.S. military bases." But what about our security, that the very presence of the U.S. military make their lives insecure? And I think in 1995—in 1995, they realized that having—hosting U.S. military bases is actually the source of their insecurity of their lives.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what happened to the particular soldiers involved in that particular rape?

KOZUE AKIBAYASHI: They were apprehended in Japan and tried in Japanese court, which is very rare. And they served for two-and-a-half—almost two-and-a-half years in the Japanese—in the Japanese system.

AMY GOODMAN: And the base was ultimately closed as a result of the outcry?

KOZUE AKIBAYASHI: No, no. That was the announcement made about half a year later in 1996 by the two governments, prime minister of Japan and the U.S. president: The Futenma air base will be closed within five to seven years. But there was a condition—there were conditions that a replacement facility needs to be built.

AMY GOODMAN: NHK reported that the new rape case was the seventh to result in the arrest of American servicemen since the United States returned to Okinawa in 1972.

KOZUE AKIBAYASHI: Seven? To that case, some of—we, women’s groups on mainland Japan and in Okinawa, protested or questioned. There are more cases, many more cases, unreported and reported, both of them—hundreds.

JOHN JUNKERMAN: That was an egregiously mistaken report. It was a—in fact, since 1972, there have been over 120 cases—

KOZUE AKIBAYASHI: Reported.

JOHN JUNKERMAN: —of rape reported. It may be that there are only seven American soldiers tried in Japanese courts, but the number of cases themselves is much more, much more widespread.

AMY GOODMAN: This just came out this week: The U.S. Army reportedly conducted field experiments of biological weapons which could harm rice cropping in Okinawa in the early 1960s, according to the Kyoto News agency, citing U.S. military documents that it had obtained. Do you know about this, John Junkerman?

JOHN JUNKERMAN: Yes, yeah. The U.S. also stored chemical and biological weapons on Okinawa, and there were cases where leaks from these barrels of biological weapons leaked into the water sources. There’s been a great deal of environmental damage done to Okinawa. Just recently, within the last year, they were digging to build a soccer field, and they dug up some 20 or 30 barrels of—you know, rusted-out barrels that had traces of dioxin in them. So...

AMY GOODMAN: John Junkerman, why is Okinawa so important to the U.S., and also, if you can talk about China in this regard?

JOHN JUNKERMAN: Well, as I mentioned, its strategic location is very important, and it’s also very close to the Senkaku Islands, where China and Japan have come to head, loggerheads, over competing claims to that territory, which is now controlled by the Japanese, but the Chinese and the Taiwanese also claim that territory. So, this has been a—it’s a very small, very, very unimportant piece of property, uninhabitable islands, very small islands, but it’s been used as an excuse for maintaining U.S. troops in Japan.

The other thing about—that makes Okinawa appealing to the Americans is that the Japanese government covers nearly 100 percent of the costs of maintaining those bases in Japan—pays for the utilities, it pays all of the workers who live on the—who work on those bases, it pays for the cooks who cook the food, it pays for the golf courses and the swimming pools, maintains everything. So the U.S. burden to have those bases there is very, very slim. There’s hardly any financial burden whatsoever. So, they get a free ride. It’s the best situation for U.S. bases in any country in the entire world.

AMY GOODMAN: How does this fit into—Okinawa fit into the U.S.-Japanese increasing military cooperation agreements?

JOHN JUNKERMAN: A lot of that cooperation is happening right there in Okinawa, and it’s happening in the waters around Okinawa and near the disputed territory there. So...

AMY GOODMAN: So how do you have a situation where most of the population in Okinawa is opposed to this base, but—and the governor ran on a platform against this base—

JOHN JUNKERMAN: Yes, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —but now has changed, though the mayor in the area is still opposed?

JOHN JUNKERMAN: The mayor is opposed. There’s an election. He’s running for re-election. The election is next Sunday. It’s a very important election. If he wins—he’s very strongly opposed to the base. If he wins, then roadblocks will be put in building those bases there. Many people—it’s an untenable situation. Many people say that despite Japanese pledges, despite the U.S. being very stubbornly committed to building this new base on Okinawa, it will never get built. It can’t be built, because 85 percent of the people on Okinawa don’t want it to be built. The reason they don’t want it is because they’ve tolerated bases for a long time. 1995 was a watershed in a sense, partly; it was 50 years since the war. So they’ve already tolerated that for 50 years. Another 20 years have passed. If they build a new base, and a very large base, that base is going to be there for another 70 years. And this is what the Okinawans won’t tolerate.

AMY GOODMAN: Kozue Akibayashi, what is ultimately the plan of the activist groups, of which you are a part, at this point, with the announcement that they’re moving forward?

KOZUE AKIBAYASHI: Our ultimate goal is to remove all bases from Okinawa. And we’ve been building network with the other what is called host communities of U.S. military in the area, in the Asia Pacific, because we realize that it’s important to know their situation, because when there have been plan to relocate Marines to—Marines in Okinawa to Guam, for example, that would be great burden for them on their small island. We did not want these—giving troops around on small islands. Our—particularly International Network Against—International Women’s Network Against Militarism is to close down all the bases, convert them to more civilian, more beneficial to local people’s use, and demilitarize the security system. As John explained, the geopolitical importance of Okinawa is within this security framework of the military security. And we are looking for a better diplomatic relationship with, cooperation with other neighboring countries. And military might is not a solution. And military might has been sustained at the expense of people like Okinawa. Those, many people in Okinawa oppose, but within all Japan, their political power is very small. And military bases are in other parts, as well. Those were built in less politically powerful areas. Their voices are not heard in the central government, and we question that political system, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, John Junkerman, the government of Prime Minister Abe, the most conservative government since World War II, how does the U.S. determine governments in Japan? And particularly, how does Article 9 of the Constitution, which the U.S. pushed forward after World War II, that Japan should not have its own army, fit into the struggle in Okinawa?

JOHN JUNKERMAN: Japan is a democracy, so the United States doesn’t in any way, shape or form determine the governments of Japan, but the U.S. has a very strong influence on government policy. And the structural relationship is one of dependence, and it’s been built and maintained that way throughout the post-war period. A piece of this is the U.S.-Japan security agreement, which allows Japan—the United States to base military in Japan and keep Japan under the nuclear umbrella and the defense umbrella of the United States. And it also keeps Japan identified with the militarist policies of the United States, so Japan’s posture to Asia is inevitably aligned with the American policy. So, rather than finding ways to—of peaceful coexistence with its neighbors, very close neighbors, very heavily armed neighbors, and finding ways to live in peaceful coexistence, it aligns itself with the United States and containment of China and, you know, basically a military-based confrontation with Asia. And Japan can’t—has not found a way to extricate itself from that relationship and from that posture.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to talk about Article 9 more in our next segment, the article within the Japanese Constitution that says Japan cannot have its own army, with the founder of Peace Boat. I want to thank you both for being with us. Kozue Akibayashi is a professor and activist with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the International Women’s Network Against Militarism here in Japan. And John Junkerman, documentary filmmaker living here in Tokyo, currently working on a film about U.S. military bases in Okinawa. His past films have included Japan’s Peace Constitution, Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We’ll be back in a minute.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/16/okinawas_revolt_decades_of_rape_environmental

U.S. reaffirms commitment

The Japan News : 4 March 2016

WASHINGTON (Jiji Press) — Building a replacement facility for the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma air base in the Henoko coastal district in Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, is “the only solution” that addresses all related issues, a spokesman of the U.S. National Security Council said Thursday.
“The United States and Japan remain committed to the plan to construct the Futenma replacement facility” in the Henoko district, the spokesman said. “It is the only solution that ... avoids the continued use of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.”

Japan to suspend construction for U.S. base relocation in Okinawa

Reuters : 4 March 2016

Japan's government will accept a court-mediated settlement plan and suspend construction work for the planned relocation of a U.S. airbase in Okinawa and will begin a new round of talks with local authorities who want the base moved off the island.

The government in Tokyo and authorities in the southern island of Okinawa have long been at loggerheads over the relocation of the U.S. Marines airbase at Futenma, an urban area on the island.
Tokyo wants to move the base to a less populated area but Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga wants the base off the island altogether.

Abe's government had already suspended construction work voluntarily for a month last year to allow time for talks with island authorities, but failed to achieve a meaningful solution.

He said the government's stance that relocating the Futenma base within the island was the only option had not changed. However, the government would again suspend construction work to give talks another chance to succeed.

"There is no change to the government's stance that the relocation to the Henoko area is the sole choice for the restoration of the Futenma base," Abe told reporters.

"But, if the current situation, in which the government and Okinawa prefecture are suing each other, continues, the Futenma base ... might very well remain fixed there for years to come," he said.

The United States and Japan agreed in 1996 to close Futenma and move its facilities elsewhere on the island. However, relocation stalled due to opposition from Okinawa residents worried about noise, pollution and crime.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-okinawa-usa-base-idUSKCN0W60B2

Joseph Nye: “the fixed bases on Okinawa become increasingly vulnerable”

Ryukyu Shimpo : 1 September 2014

Former US Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Nye suggested in his article posted to the Huffington Post on August 7 that “many Japanese still resent the lack of symmetry in the alliance obligations. Others chafe at the burden of U.S. bases, particularly on the island of Okinawa.” He pointed out, “As China invests in advanced ballistic missiles, the fixed bases on Okinawa become increasingly vulnerable.” Joseph Nye is one of the most influential foreign policy thinkers on Japan policy in the U.S. Democratic Party.
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The governments of Japan and the United States have asserted Okinawa’s strategic location as a reason to concentrate US forces on the islands. However, Nye suggests that so-called geographical advantage of Okinawa is lost.  The former US Assistant Secretary of Defense emphasized, “The U.S. and Japan must rethink the structure of their alliance.” However, referring to the future alliance between Japan and the United States, Nye said, “Abe’s modest step toward collective self-defense is a step in the right direction.” He pointed out, referring to the US forces in Japan, “A longer-term goal should thus be for the U.S. gradually to transfer its bases to Japanese control, leaving American forces to rotate among them.” At the same time, he said that the process must be handled carefully.
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He stressed, “To avoid the perception that the U.S. decided to turn the bases over to Japan just when their military benefits were diminishing, and to ensure that the move represented America’s recommitment to the alliance, a joint commission would have to be established to manage the transfer.”  Nye supported the United States Government’s policy to move the U.S. Marine Corps to Australia in his article posted in the opinion pages of The New York Times web site on November 21, 2011. He pointed out “The current official plan to move the Marines inside Okinawa is unlikely to be acceptable to the Okinawa people.”

………………...

Please recall: While the DPJ administration was seeking the relocation outside of Okinawa Prefecture of the U.S. Marine Corps now based at Futenma, a staff member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan suggested to United States government officials that they should not compromise on the Futenma relocation plan.
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Behind the scene, ten major general construction contractors won contracts related to the construction project for a new U.S. base in Nago’s Henoko district in Okinawa after donating a total of 63 million yen to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in 2014.'

http://tokuraaya3.blogspot.in/2015/12/japanese-bureaucrat-advises-us.html

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http://english.ryukyushimpo.jp/2014/09/16/15302/

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“Moving Marines to Australia is a smart move,” suggests the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Prof. Nye

Ryukyu Shimpo : 23 November 2011

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Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense of the Clinton administration, Professor Joseph Nye supports the United States Government’s policy to move the U.S. Marine Corps to Australia. He is known as a key figure in the pro-Japanese group, and has been involved in the relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station issue from about 15 years ago. Nye contributed an article entitled “A Pivot That Is Long Overdue” to the opinion pages of the New York Times (on its website) on November 21, in which he pointed out “The current official plan to move the Marines inside Okinawa is unlikely to be acceptable to the Okinawa people.” He also stated his support for the Obama Administration’s plan, saying, “Moving Marines to Australia is a smart move.”

Professor Joseph Nye

 As a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense in 1995, he engaged himself in the “East Asia Strategy Report” known as the “Nye Initiative,” in which he advocated that the United States should maintain a total of 100000 troops in East Asia and emphasized the importance of the U.S. Marine Corps and other forces in Okinawa. As a professor at Harvard University after leaving the Clinton administration, he has a strong influence on U.S.-Japan’s security relations, including U.S. policy toward Japan.

With regard to moving the Marines to Australia to restrict China’s moves to increase its maritime interests, Nye suggested, “they will be able to train and exercise freely without inadvertently signaling a withdrawal from the region.”

On the Futenma Air Station, he pointed out, “There is the fine print about Okinawa, where the crowded Marine air base at Futenma has caused friction that undercuts our larger strategy,” and also added, moving the Marines to Australia “sends the right message to China, and avoids further friction with Japan.”

With regard to the U.S. Marine Corps being stationed in Australia, U.S. President Barack Obama showed this plan at his summit meeting with the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, held on November 16. According to both governments, between 200 and 250 Marines will be deployed in there the middle of next year, and the number of Marines will be increased in stages, and their bilateral military exchanges will also be expanded. The United States will not construct its own base, but instead use existing military facilities in Australia. It also announced that it will extend the scale to 2500 Marines in the future.

Article by Professor Nye (Summary)

 There are three good reasons for President Obama’s decision to rotate regularly 2,500 Marines through an Australian base. … Third, there is the fine print about Okinawa, where the crowded Marine air base at Futenma has caused friction that undercuts our larger strategy. The U.S. and Japan have been working on the Futenma issue since I co-chaired a special action committee on Okinawa — in 1995! The current official plan to move the Marines inside Okinawa is unlikely to be acceptable to the Okinawa people. Moving Marines to Australia is a smart move because they will be able to train and exercise freely without inadvertently signaling a withdrawal from the region.

http://english.ryukyushimpo.jp/2011/11/30/3945/

 

In security shift, Japan eyes equal partnership with U.S.

The Japan Times : 20 April 2015

Under the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan is preparing to expand the scope of activities the Self-Defense Forces can engage in by passing a package of security bills being drafted and new defense guidelines with the United States that will allow its troops to help an ally under attack.

Later this month, Japan and the United States will revise the bilateral defense cooperation guidelines, which U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Christine Wormuth claims will take the alliance to “the next level.”

Experts say the move is in response to the changing East Asian security climate, marked by the rise of China and a relative drop in the U.S. military’s regional presence, though Washington has asked for a more robust SDF.

The decision to enable Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense, long banned by the war-renouncing Constitution, will bring Japan “closer to being the equal partner of the United States under the alliance,” said former Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto.

Under the bilateral security treaty, the United States must protect Japan, while Tokyo’s obligations are limited to the provision of facilities and areas for use by U.S. forces, and joint responses to armed attacks in Japanese territories.

Due to its one-sided nature, critics, particularly those in the U.S., say the treaty gives Japan a “free ride,” notes Morimoto, the first nonpolitician to serve as defense chief.

Fully aware of the issue, Japan has for decades worked to repay the United States. Tokyo provides massive financial assistance to help cover the costs of U.S. bases in the country, and the SDF buys a many U.S.-made weapons.

This, however, “has not been enough to eliminate the one-sidedness,” Morimoto claims.
At the time of the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, Washington asked Tokyo to dispatch the SDF for support. But Japan refrained from any personnel contribution, limiting its assistance to financial support.

“The United States expressed disappointment, asking, ‘Why won’t the SDF come?’ ” recounts a Foreign Ministry official who was at the Japanese Embassy in Washington at the time.
The official stressed that it is essential to expand the roles the SDF is allowed to play to strengthen the alliance.

The U.S. has been consistent in its request for greater contributions from the SDF. Morimoto says Washington “repeatedly asked Japan to resolve the issue of collective self-defense” during his six-month stint as defense chief until December 2012 under the Democratic Party of Japan administration.

The planned security legislation will enable the SDF and the U.S. military to jointly use force if three conditions for collective self-defense are satisfied. The requirements were set last year.
Also planned is a permanent law that would allow Japan to more quickly send SDF troops overseas to provide logistic support to the U.S. and for a limited number of other operations.

To date, Japan has drafted and enacted an ad hoc law each time it has sent the SDF overseas, including when troops were dispatched to Iraq for reconstruction and other assistance purposes in the 2000s.

“Ad hoc laws take time to enact,” says Hideaki Kaneda, former commander of the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s Fleet Escort Force. “A permanent law will allow (the SDF) to provide education and training in preparations for possible rapid dispatches.”

Under the current system, Morimoto says, the ad hoc laws have often frustrated the U.S. since they delay SDF dispatches and come later than similar contributions by other nations.

Under the envisioned permanent law, the SDF would engage in assistance activities outside the areas where “combat activities are actually being conducted.” The government is also expected to lift a ban on the SDF’s provision of ammunition to foreign forces.

Abe has repeatedly said there will be no change in the nation’s status as a peaceful nation. But some opposition lawmakers remain skeptical.

The security legislation “will lead to unlimited expansion of (Japanese) military assistance for U.S.-initiated wars,” Japanese Communist Party leader Kazuo Shii says. “It is war legislation, designed to let Japan join conflicts by exercising the right to collective self-defense.”

Analysts and officials point to China’s military buildup as a rationale for Abe’s security efforts.
U.S. government and military officials, including David Shear, U.S. assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs, have expressed their hopes the SDF and the U.S. military will carry out joint warning and surveillance activities in the South China Sea, where China’s presence is increasing.

Presently, the SDF does not engage in any such activity in the South China Sea.
But at an April 2 news conference, Adm. Katsutoshi Kawano, chief of staff at the SDF’s Joint Staff, emphasized the importance of the South China Sea, home to sea lanes crucial to Japan.

Where the SDF should conduct warning and surveillance operations is determined “depending on the security environment and needs of the time,” Kawano says, indicating his positive view on possible SDF activities in the area.

Sino-Japanese relations have only just begun to improve after hitting historic lows. Tensions still remain strong over history issues and the Japan-administered Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which are also claimed by China.

Under the current situation, joint warning and surveillance activities between Japan and the United States in the South China Sea could provoke strong reactions from Beijing.

Former Defense Ministry official Kyoji Yanagisawa, who has also served as assistant chief Cabinet secretary, says that such joint operations would clearly show that Japan is helping with “moves to contain China.”

“We must fully recognize the risk of Japan becoming a target of (Chinese) attacks,” Yanagisawa, however, warns.

While making strenuous efforts to strengthen the Japan-U.S. alliance, Abe’s government has made little headway in improving the country’s relations with both China and South Korea.

“His foreign policy has few features other than its reliance on the United States,” says lawyer Sayo Saruta, director of a foreign policy think tank in Tokyo. “I can’t see what he wants to achieve by enabling Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense.”

Could Japan Become America’s New Proxy Army?

The Nation : 27 July 2015

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to alter a key provision of Japan’s constitution to lift the country’s 70-year ban on foreign deployments.

Over the last month, Japan has been shaken by the largest anti-war demonstrations since the late 1960s, when millions of students, workers, and ordinary citizens turned out to try to block their government’s collaboration with the US war in Vietnam. The issue this time is the plan by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to alter a key provision of Japan’s peace constitution to allow Japan’s “Self Defense Forces” to take part in overseas military operations for the first time since World War II.

That happened on July 16, when Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party pushed through a critical vote in the Japanese Diet to lift its 70-year ban on foreign deployments and, as The New York Times reported, give “Japan’s military limited powers to fight in foreign conflicts.” This week, the controversial legislation is being debated by Japan’s Upper House. The Democratic Party of Japan, the largest opposition party, faces an uphill battle to stop the bill despite the growing number of people expressing their opposition in the streets.   Abe’s victory will transform Japan—with its surprisingly large, tech-driven military-industrial complex—into America’s new proxy army. It builds on recent changes to US-Japanese “guidelines” on strategic cooperation that, as the Times has reported, will “expand the reach of Japan’s military—now limited to its own defense—allowing it to act when the United States or countries American forces are defending are threatened.” The agreement was hammered out in April, when Abe met at the White House with President Obama, and was clearly on the administration’s mind when the LDP claimed victory in the Diet.   “We certainly welcome Japan’s ongoing efforts to strengthen the alliance and to play a more active role in regional and international security activities, as reflected in our new guidelines for US-Japan defense cooperation,” State Department spokesman Robert Kirby told reporters. And as Foreign Policy pointed out last week, the development “could be very good news for U.S. defense contractors.”   But the dramatic shift in Japan’s military posture is strongly opposed by its neighbors, particularly in Korea and China. A recent poll showed 62 percent of Japanese respondents opposed the security legislation, the Japan Times reports. And as protests by citizens, academics, constitutional scholars, and even government officials mount, some analysts believe the right-wing Abe has badly overstepped and may have even dug his own political grave by flouting Japan’s strong commitment to pacifism in overseas affairs. So who is this prime minister who has won the trust of the Obama administration while earning the enmity of the growing majority of its own citizens? Here’s everything you need to know about “our guy” in Tokyo and his party’s long ties to the United States.

Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party was put in power with the help of the CIA and became one of the most subservient political allies the United States has ever had.

Here is how I described the LDP’s history as America’s underling in Asia in The Nation in 2003:

[Japan’s LDP] was the junior partner to the United States during the cold war, when Washington created an alliance of anticommunist dictators who supported American foreign policy while repressing their own people…. The symbiotic relationship between Washington and Tokyo was forged in 1948, when the United States “reversed course” in its occupation of Japan to focus on the containment of communism. Almost overnight, US policy shifted from punishing Japanese bureaucrats and industrialists responsible for World War II to enlisting them in a global war against the Soviet Union and China.

This was an easy shift for the corporate and financial conglomerates who backed Japan’s cruel war, according to Muto Ichiyo, a Japanese writer and activist who worked closely with the US anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s.   “The part of Japanese imperialism which was made powerless after the defeat in the war wanted, of course, to revive itself,” Muto once explained to me in Tokyo. “But they knew perfectly well that the situation had changed. They knew also that fighting against America again would be both impossible and purposeless. So they adopted a very clear-cut strategy: Japan will concentrate on the buildup of the economic base structure of imperialism, while America will practically rule Asia through its military forces.”

The late, great Chalmers Johnson once compared Japan’s postwar LDP prime ministers to the East German leaders Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker and their obeisance to the USSR. “Just as the two satraps of the German Democratic Republic faithfully followed every order they ever received from Moscow, each and every Japanese prime minister, as soon as he comes into office, get on an air plane and reports to Washington,” Johnson wrote in Blowback, his classic account of the Cold War’s impact on US foreign policy.   The LDP’s CIA ties were documented by Times reporter Tim Weiner in his excellent history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes. As summarized by the great Tokyo journalist Jake Adelstein, Weiner’s Japan chapter “details how in post-war Japan, the CIA, using large amounts of cash, reinstated former war criminal Kodama Yoshio and hand-picked one of Japan’s Prime Ministers–in order to suppress communist/socialist movements…and ensure that Japan didn’t go red.” Adelstein himself investigated the LDP’s mob ties to the Japanese yakuza, who were often enlisted by the LDP to crush antiwar and labor protests.

Abe, who was previously Prime Minister from 2006 to 2007, represents the most right-wing faction of the pro-American LDP, and speaks for a virulent minority of politicians and civil society groups who idealize Japan’s World War II empire in East Asia and want to restore its greatness in a military alliance with the United States.

According to Gavan McCormack, the eminent Australian historian of modern Japan:

Abe…was in fact the most radical of all Japanese post-1945 leaders. He declared his…mission as Prime Minister to be nothing less than the “recovery of independence” (dokuritsu no kaifuku). His term was marked by denialism (of war responsibility, notably for the comfort women and the Nanjing massacre) and ultra-nationalism (the insistence on the need to rewrite Japan’s history and its textbooks so as to make people proud and fill them with patriotic spirit)…. [He] strived to turn the bilateral relationship into a “mature” alliance, reinforcing Japanese military subordination and integration under US command and taking preliminary steps towards revising the constitution to facilitate that process.

With his latest triumphs in the Diet, Abe has fulfilled his most cherished dreams—and those of his own family. As Abe likes to remind audiences, he is the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, one of the original members of the LDP who was Japan’s prime minister from 1957 to 1960. During World War II, Kishi was minister of commerce and industry in the wartime Tojo Cabinet and labeled by the US occupation as a “Class A” war criminal for helping run Japan’s colonial empire in Manchuria. And, as Weiner’s book documents, he was funded for years by the CIA. Abe, whose father also served at the highest reaches of the LDP, is very proud of Kishi, as The Wall Street Journal reported upon his second election as premier in December 2014:

Shinzo Abe recalls sitting on his grandfather’s lap as a young boy 55 years ago. They listened to protesters in the streets outside who opposed the older man’s push to rebuild Japan’s military after World War II, Mr. Abe says. Soon after, Mr. Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, resigned as Japan’s prime minister, his aims for his country unfulfilled. Now, as Japan’s most powerful prime minister in years, Mr. Abe is looking to complete some of his grandfather’s unfinished business.

The “unfinished business” of an expanded US-Japan military alliance has been pushed heavily by US national security officials from both the Democratic and Republican parties for decades.

Last April, just before he retired as Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel made the link between Abe’s remilitarization and the changes in Japan’s constitution very explicit, telling Nikkei, Japan’s premiere financial newspaper, that the Obama administration “welcomes Japan’s efforts to play a more proactive role in the alliance, including by re-examining the interpretation of its constitution relating to the right of collective self-defense.”

The US position on the alliance was spelled out in 2012, in a joint statement issued by Washington’s most important military think-tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS (which, in addition to being heavily funded by defense contractors, receives a considerable amount of money from the Japanese government).   The CSIS panel was chaired by the leading ideologists of the Make-Japan-Our-Proxy-Army Movement (yes, I made that up), Richard Armitage, a military veteran of the Reagan and Bush II administrations, and Joseph Nye, a Democratic policy-maker and former Pentagon official at Harvard’s Kennedy School. In 2012, they convened a panel of Asian “experts” from the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush administrations that included Asia hardliners Victor Cha and Michael Green, both now of Georgetown University, and David Asher, a senior fellow at the Center for New American Security, the military think-tank that’s supplied half of Obama’s appointments to the Pentagon (Armitage chairs its board of advisers).   Suffice to say, these are the current “wise men” of the American foreign policy establishment, and they had strong words for Abe and their new proxy military. Here were their instructions to Tokyo:

Japan should expand the scope of her responsibilities to include the defense of Japan and defense with the United States in regional contingencies. The allies require more robust, shared, and interoperable ISR capabilities and operations that extend well beyond Japanese territory. It would be a responsible authorization on the part of Japan to allow U.S. forces and JSDF to respond in full cooperation throughout the security spectrum of peacetime, tension, crisis, and war

In the body of the report, Armitage and Nye directly address the question of constitutional change in Japan, as if the United States, which did impose the 1945 constitution, continues to have the right to tell its defeated colony what to do.

The irony…is that under the most severe conditions requiring the protection of Japan’s interests, our forces are legally prevented from collectively defending Japan. A change in Japan’s prohibition of collective self-defense would address that irony in full…. Prohibition of collective self-defense is an impediment to the alliance…. It would be a responsible authorization to allow our forces to respond in full cooperation throughout the security spectrum of peacetime, tension, crisis, and war.

On July 13, Abe got that change through his Diet. Now it only has to pass the Upper House, and it becomes law. When it does, Japan—with assistance from the United States—will have taken a decisive step away from 70 years as a pacifist nation.   Which brings me back to Jake Adelstein, one of very few foreign reporters in Japan who’ve kept the tradition of investigative reporting alive. In a highly trafficked article in the Daily Beast, Adelstein said that Abe had badly over-reached in his zeal to make Japan part of the US military order in East Asia, and could fall as a result.

The popularity of his cabinet is sinking, the majority of the population now opposes the legislation, [and] over 90 percent of Japanese academics, and former prosecutors as well, have condemned the proposed legislation as unconstitutional. The media is turning on him. Even heavy hitters within his own Liberal Democratic Party are voicing disapproval. Its former secretary general, Makoto Koga, called the Abe regime “dark and creepy” in a recent interview.

A poll by Nippon TV saw disapproval ratings for the Abe government rising higher than its approval for the first time since he assumed power in December 2012. Support for the cabinet is 39 percent; disapproval 41 percent. Some 59 percent of those polled oppose passage of the Legislation for Peace and Security (aka the War Bill). Only 24 percent actually supports the bills. It may be the beginning of the end of his reign.

Let’s hope so.