Japanese authorities investigate the scene where an explosion took place at a park in Tokyo on Sept. 24, 2016. The explosion injured three South Koreans who were preparing to open a booth for Korean cuisine at the South Korea-Japan cultural exchange event. (Yonhap)
Over at Mashable they have the story about Lieutenant Hiroo Onada posted who was the Japanese soldier who after Japan surrendered during World War II decided to fight on with his companions. The below article features some great photos that are worth checking out:
After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on Aug. 15, 1945, Japan announced its surrender, bringing an end to World War II.
But for some, the war was not over.
Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was 22 years old when he was deployed to Lubang Island in the Philippines in December 1944. As an intelligence officer, he was given orders to disrupt and sabotage enemy efforts — and to never surrender or take his own life.
Allied forces landed on the island in February 1945, and before long Onoda and three others were the only Japanese soldiers who had not surrendered or died. They retreated into the hills, with plans to continue the fight as guerrillas.
The group survived on bananas, coconut milk and stolen cattle while engaging in sporadic shootouts with local police.
In late 1945, the group began encountering air-dropped leaflets announcing that the war was over, and ordering all holdouts to surrender. After careful consideration, they dismissed the leaflets as a trick, and fought on. [Mashable]
You can read the rest at the link, but Lt. Onoda and his companions over the decades would either surrender or be killed leaving him ultimately along until his surrender in 1974. I always thought that Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda should have been hunted down and held accountable for his crimes. His group had to have known that the war was over and yet they continued to kill civilians. I believe the real reason his group did not surrender was not because of honor, but because they did not want to be held accountable for the war crimes they committed.
This is pretty significant because with the Japanese participating in training patrols in the South China Sea it may encourage other countries to do so as well which would only further erode Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea:
China is “disappointed to the point of despair” with Japan’s conduct in the South China Sea, it said Monday, after Tokyo announced it may set up training patrols with the US in the contested region.
China asserts sovereignty over almost all of the strategically vital waters in the face of rival claims from its Southeast Asian neighbours, and has rapidly turned reefs in the area into artificial islands capable of hosting military planes.
In a speech last week Japanese defence minister Tomomi Inada called China’s actions a “deliberate attempt to unilaterally change the status quo, achieve a fait accompli, and undermine the prevailing norms”, according to a transcript released by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Inada said Japan would increase its engagement in the South China Sea through joint training cruises with the US Navy, exercises with regional navies and capacity-building assistance to coastal nations. [AFP]
You can read more at the link, but it will be interesting to see what the ROK will do if more countries come forward to conduct these training patrols in the SCS.
I wonder how much this has to do with election year politics in anticipation of next year’s ROK Presidential campaign season?:
South Korea shied away from forging a military intelligence sharing pact with Japan during talks between the leaders of the two countries in Laos, the foreign ministry said Thursday.
The long protracted issue of signing the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) was discussed during the summit meeting between President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Vientiane, on Wednesday, Cho Jung-hyuck, spokesman of the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs, said during a regular briefing.
“(But) Securing the sufficient understanding and cooperation from the National Assembly and the public is necessary,” Cho quoted the South Korean side as having told the Japanese side.
Park and Abe are in the Southeast Asian country to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting and the East Asia Summit.
The remarks suggest Park may have rejected Abe’s offer for the agreement’s signing.
South Korea and Japan came close to forging the GSOMIA in 2012, but the final signing was aborted amid public protests in South Korea. Protestors then accused the South Korean government of attempting to sign the militarily sensitive deal with the former colonial ruler in a clandestine manner. [Yonhap]
It seems that if the Chinese are coming out and threatening the Japanese with military action for moving their ships through waters that an International Court has said is not Chinese; this almost forces the Japanese to sail through them to force the point that these are international waters and that they will not be intimidated:
Satellite images of South China Sea taken show China’s construction of aircraft hangars on the disputed Spratly islands
Beijing is thought to have threatened Japan that it would launch military action if Tokyo pressed ahead with its stance on the South China Sea dispute. Chinese officials are reported to have conveyed the warning to a top-ranking Japanese official in June.
According to diplomatic sources, cited by Japan’s Kyodo news agency, China’s ambassador to Japan, Cheng Yonghua, told Japan that it would cross a “red line” if Japanese vessels took part in the so-called freedom of navigation operations launched by the US in the South China Sea. Cheng even went on to indicate that Beijing would not hesitate to take military action. This emerged only on Sunday, 21 August though the incident reportedly occurred in June. [IB Times]
You would think the Japanese would have done this long ago considering the territorial threat they are facing from China. Adding these missile systems will make the Chinese think twice about any military adventurism that will cost them many ships plus it complicates enemy targeting:
Japan has decided to develop and deploy a land-to-sea missile system designed to enhance defense in the East China Sea at the same time it is embroiled in a tense standoff with China over the disputed Senkaku island chain, according to Japanese media reports.
Vehicle-mounted, GPS-guided missiles with a range of about 186 miles will be deployed to major southern islands such as Miyako in Okinawa Prefecture, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported Sunday, citing unnamed sources, which is customary in Japan. The system’s cost will be proposed in the fiscal 2017 defense budget request slated for release in mid-September.
The Ministry of Defense, which would not deny the move to procure the system when reached Monday, aims to deploy the missiles around 2023. [Stars & Stripes]
This would be just one more step to Japan and Korea putting the past behind them and hopefully moving forward to a more cooperative future:
This file photo shows a statue of a girl in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul which symbolizes the Korean women sexually enslaved at a young age by Japanese forces. (Yonhap)
Japan’s foreign minister pledged Friday to “swiftly” transfer funds to assist South Korean victims of the country’s colonial-era sexual enslavement, the foreign ministry here said, as the two neighbors ironed out the final details of a deal aimed at ending the decades-old feud over this painful issue.
Seoul’s top diplomat Yun Byung-se and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida held telephone talks earlier in the day before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the Japanese decision.
“Foreign Minister Kishida remarked that the Japanese government has decided to disburse the 1 billion yen (US$9.9 million) fund that will come from its government budget as soon as domestic procedures following the deal in December are finalized,” the foreign ministry here said in a statement.
The latest development came amid a delay in Japan’s transfer of the billion yen fund which the country committed to pay in a landmark deal reached with South Korea on Dec. 28 to put an end to the diplomatic feud over the so-called comfort women issue. [Yonhap]
This is pretty significant if the South Korean government moves forward with this suggestion:
North Korea provocations are making Seoul reconsider intelligence sharing strategies with Tokyo.
Seoul’s defense ministry spokesman Moon Sang-kyun told reporters Thursday the radar information from the U.S. anti-missile defense system THAAD could be shared with Japan, local news service Newsis reported.
That response was a departure from a previous statement issued July 19, when Defense Minister Han Min-koo told parliamentarians the information from the THAAD radar would not be shared with Japan. [UPI]
You can read more at the link, but keep in mind that the South Koreans do not need THAAD to share data with Japan. That is because the ROK already has their Israeli bought Green Pine radars installed with coverage of North Korea that could also share the data with Japan if the ROK wanted to.
