It looks like the US is getting closer to getting Japan and South Korea to final conclude an intelligence sharing agreement which from a military perspective makes so much sense considering the common threat posed by North Korea:
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken speaks at a news conference at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul on April 19, 2016. (Yonhap)
South Korea, the United States and Japan will look to expand their sharing of military intelligence in response to the growing threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, a top U.S. diplomat said Wednesday.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken made the remarks in an interview with South Korean reporters, saying the three countries are boosting security cooperation to protect their citizens from any North Korean provocation.
“Information-sharing among us is one important element of being as safe and secure as possible,” he said. “And we will look for ways to deepen that information sharing as we move forward.”
The prospect of sharing military intelligence with Japan has been a sensitive issue in South Korea where there are still deep-seated reservations about the former colonial ruler. In 2012, the two sides tried to sign a General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) to share intelligence on North Korea, but the plan was scrapped, as critics accused the government of arranging the deal behind their backs. [Yonhap]
The Dokdo Foundation on Monday released four maps of Shimane Prefecture produced by Japan after the 1905 treaty that forcibly sealed Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea.
All four maps marked Oki Island, which is located 50 kilometers off the prefecture but not Dokdo.
Japan has claimed that it incorporated the Dokdo Islets into Shimane Prefecture with the prefectural notice of February 22, 1905.
The maps, however, prove that Dokdo was not marked on the maps of the prefecture even after the 1905 notice.
An official at the Dokdo Foundation said that maps showing Dokdo in the jurisdiction of the prefecture have yet to be found, not even in Japan.
Given that the maps were produced by the Japanese government, a leading newspaper and a publisher, the official suspects that the 1905 notice of Shimane Prefecture was never officially issued in Japan and must have been an instrument of propaganda to enhance its claims to Dokdo. [KBS World Radio]
I would think the term “patrols” used in the article would be referring to Japan’s Aegis ships that have ballistic missile defense capabilities. It seems prudent for the Japanese to do this considering the possibility of the Musudan being fired over their country:
Japan says it is tightening patrols as a contingency against news that North Korea has deployed its Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles near Wonsan in Gangwon Province.
Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters Thursday that the possibility of an additional provocation by North Korea can’t be denied.
He said the Japanese government will continue to keep close tabs and do its best in patrolling and surveillance.
Speaking to reporters, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga also said the government was highly attentive to North Korea’s nuclear and missile issue and has been gathering and analyzing intelligence.
He said the Self-Defense Forces were also maintaining defense readiness.
When asked if Pyongyang could launch a missile on Friday, the birthday of late North Korean founder Kim Il-sung, Suga said the Tokyo government is aware and coordinating with South Korea and the U.S. on response measures. [KBS World Radio]
With the nuclear threat North Korea is building and the continued territorial aggressiveness of the Chinese developing nuclear weapons in both South Korea and Japan may happen eventually anyway:
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has reiterated that he is open to allowing South Korea and Japan to have nuclear weapons so as to defend themselves against threats from North Korea.
Trump made the remark during a town hall meeting televised on CNN Tuesday night, stressing that the North has nuclear weapons and the U.S. is no longer rich enough to defend other wealthy nations, like Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.
“Can I be honest are you? Maybe it’s going to have to be time to change, because so many people, you have Pakistan has it, you have China has it. You have so many other countries are now having it,” Trump said, referring to nuclear weapons.
“At some point we have to say, you know what, we’re better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea. We’re better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself,” Trump said, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Asked again if he means it’s OK for Japan, South Korea and even Saudi Arabia to have nuclear weapons, Trump said, “It’s going to happen anyway. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s only a question of time. They’re going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely.” [Yonhap]
More bad news for US Forces Japan. The strangest thing to me about this story is how do you assault someone for 90 minutes on airplane?:
A Navy lieutenant was arrested Friday following allegations that he groped and punched a female passenger aboard a Japan-bound flight, police and Navy officials said.
The lieutenant, 33, assigned to Naval Air Facility Atsugi, is suspected of touching the 19-year-old college student’s clothed thigh, then punching her in the head several times during a flight from San Diego to Narita International Airport, an airport police spokesman said.
Police allege the officer assaulted the woman for about 90 minutes aboard the Japan Airlines flight, beginning around 11 a.m. Thursday, according to police and media reports.
The woman changed seats after another passenger reported the incident to a flight attendant, police said.
The officer had been drinking on the flight, though how much he had consumed is unclear, the police spokesman said.
Police arrested the lieutenant and took him into custody shortly after midnight, following an investigation that began after the plane arrived Thursday afternoon. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest of this crazy story at the link.
Here we go again, hopefully the hotel has security cameras that caught exactly what happened in the hotel lobby:
(CNN)A U.S. serviceman has been arrested in the southern Japanese prefecture of Okinawa on suspicion of raping a Japanese tourist, local police have confirmed to CNN. The alleged attack took place in the serviceman’s hotel room in Naha, the prefectural capital.
The man, identified by Okinawan police as 24-year old Navy sailor Justin Castellanos, stationed at Camp Schwab in Okinawa, allegedly took the victim, a 40-year-old woman from the Japanese prefecture of Kyushu, to his room after finding her asleep, drunk, in the hotel’s lobby before raping her. [CNN]
You can read the rest at the link but it does bother me how the media names the accused sailor in the article before he even goes to trial.
I have always thought that one of the things that may have motivated some of these World War II hold outs was the fear of being prosecuted for war crimes, not the idea of never surrendering. There was a number of massacres that happened on Guam during the war that makes me wonder of Sergeant Yokoi had anything to do with?:
Cpl. Shoichi Yokoi, center, who held out in the remote jungle of Guam for 28 years after the end of World War II, raises his hands with two other former holdouts of the Japanese army on July 30, 1972, in this photo displayed at the Pacific War Museum, Guam.
For some combat veterans, war lives on in memories of camaraderie, loss, pride and shame.
For a small group of Japanese soldiers who fought in World War II, the war literally did not end for decades.
Referred to as “stragglers” or “holdouts,” these men retreated to remote, mountainous jungles as Allied forces retook dozens of Pacific islands conquered by Japan.
Guam is tiny compared with some other Asian nations, but its small population that clustered mainly along the eastern coastline left much of the interior isolated even 25 years after war’s end in 1945.
Cpl. Shoichi Yokoi was among the last of the stragglers discovered in the Pacific, captured on the eastern side of Guam in 1972 when two local shrimpers were checking traps along the Ugum River abutting the cave he’d lived in for 28 years.
Photographs of Yokoi and other Guam stragglers — Pvt. Bunzo Minagawa and Sgt. Masashi Ito, both captured in 1960 — are on display at the Pacific War Museum in Guam. [Stars & Stripes]
