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| Japan's Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera (Wiki Info - Image: Wiki Commons) |
By Victor Robert Lee
Itsunori Onodera has spent the week bolstering Japan’s defenses, but was not helped by his colleagues.
Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera has been an exceptionally busy man this week, which coincides with U.S. President Barack Obama’s state visit to Tokyo. On April 19, Onodera oversaw the groundbreaking ceremony for a new military base and radar installation on Yonaguni Island, Japan’s westernmost territory, only 110 kilometers from Taiwan and the closest inhabited spot to the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, hotly disputed by China and Japan.
Onodera’s attendance at the groundbreaking was delayed by thirty minutes as 70 protestors jostled with security personnel to block the minister’s vehicle. The Yonaguni base will be the first expansion of Japan’s military footprint in more than forty years. In his speech at Yonaguni, Onodera also suggested the possibility of Japan creating additional bases on its southwest islands, which lie closest to China.
The next day at Naha Air Base on the island of Okinawa, Onodera launched a new squadron of four E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft to increase surveillance of the skies between China and Japan’s southern islands, which include the disputed Senkakus/Diaoyus. Underscoring the need for the new squadron, the Ministry of Defense reported earlier this month that in the twelve-month period ending March 2014, it had scrambled fighter jets in response to Chinese aircraft approaching Japan’s airspace a record 415 times, up from 306 in the prior twelve months. The ministry said “many” of the Chinese aircraft were fighter jets.
Read the full story at The Diplomat