Category: Japan

I had no idea that the Japanese road tax sticker was designed by a USFJ civilian employee. This is a pretty cool story:

Tomoko Hyatt has no formal art training, but her designs are in high demand across Japan, displayed by tens of thousands of people and growing in popularity. Hyatt, a civilian employee at this U.S. airlift hub in western Tokyo, creates the colorful sticker that anyone under the status of forces agreement must display each spring on their personal vehicle to prove they have paid the annual Japanese road tax. (………)

Her husband, Matthew Hyatt, a meteorological technician with the 374th Operations Support Squadron, has a background in graphic design and introduced her to Adobe Illustrator. Her work has sparked a following. She recently launched a Facebook page — Tomoko’s Tokyo Treasures — where she sells items featuring her designs, including patches, ceramic ornaments and stickers.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

At some point the Japanese have got to give the Senkaku Islands the Dokdo treatment and just put a small military garrison on it in order to show the island is and always will be Japanese:

Japan and China are accusing each other of violating the airspace around the Japanese-controlled East China Sea islands that Beijing also claims. Japan’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that it has protested to Beijing after a Chinese helicopter that took off from one of China’s four coast guard boats had entered Japan’s territorial waters around the Senkaku island, violating the Japanese airspace around them for about 15 minutes on Saturday.

In response to the airspace intrusion, Japan’s Self-Defense Force scrambled fighter jets, the Defense Ministry said. China routinely sends coast guard vessels and aircraft into waters and airspace surrounding the islands, which China calls the Diaoyu, to harass Japanese vessels in the area and force Japan to scramble jets in response.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It the coming years USFJ is going to turn into a warfighting headquarters much like USFK in Korea:

U.S. Forces Japan has begun reorganizing into a “warfighting headquarters,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Sunday during his first trip to the Indo-Pacific since taking office. Hegseth that day discussed restructuring USFJ amid regional security challenges with Japanese Minister of Defense Gen Nakatani at Camp Ichigaya, the Ministry of Defense headquarters in central Tokyo.

The Defense Department has begun the first phase of upgrading USFJ into a joint force command better equipped to coordinate with its Japanese counterpart, Hegseth told reporters after the meeting. “This also means reorganizing U.S. Forces Japan into a warfighting headquarters, increasing its staff and giving its commander the authorities needed to accomplish new missions,” he said

Stars and Stripes

You can read more at the link, but a difference I see between the future USFJ and USFK is that the USFK commander has operational control of US and ROK forces during a conflict. The future USFJ will instead coordinate with Japanese Joint opeational command during conflict.

Let me get this right, North Korea can regularly fire missiles near and over Japan, but Japan when Japan install missiles on its own territory in response North Korea is now upset?:

North Korea warned Japan against stationing long-range missiles on Kyushu, accusing the country of furthering a “history of aggression,” according to a report Thursday from the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

Japan is considering deploying an upgraded version of its Type-12 surface-to-ship missiles there at the end of the next fiscal year, Kyodo News reported Sunday, citing unnamed government sources. Japan’s fiscal year runs April 1 to March 31. The deployment to Japan’s southernmost main island would put the missiles — expected to have a range of about 620 miles, according to Kyodo — within reach of North Korea and China’s coast.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Should schools being helping students to organize protests especially during school time?:

More than 60 high school students staged a walkout here Friday to protest Pentagon policies affecting diversity initiatives, the third such demonstration at a Defense Department school since Feb. 11.

The Kadena High School students — children of airmen and DOD employees — walked out at 10 a.m. for a 15-minute protest in front of the school, principal James Bleeker wrote in a letter emailed to parents that afternoon. Stars and Stripes counted at least 80 students in photos taken from about 250 feet away. Sophomore Elliot Field organized the walkout with support from the DODEA Student Advocacy Core Team, which also backed a Feb. 21 protest at Nile C. Kinnick High School on Yokosuka Naval Base, she said by email Wednesday. She took inspiration from that protest, where about 150 students walked out.

“It’s kind of frightening because I’ve never done anything like this before,” she told Stars and Stripes outside the school before the walkout. “I’ve always sort of been like, if something needs to get done, why not just do it? Something needed to happen.” Field said she coordinated the protest with Bleeker. Miranda Ferguson, a spokeswoman for Department of Defense Education Activity-Pacific, confirmed in an email Friday that the demonstration was organized with school administrators.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but would these same DODEA administrators allow students to organize a MAGA protest, an anti-abortion protest, a border security protest, etc.? Where is line for organized protests during school hours?