The Defense Ministry has kept all daily reports compiled by the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) unit participating in U.N. peacekeeping operations in South Sudan since the start of the Japanese mission there in January 2012, it was learned on Feb. 17.
The ministry has electronic copies of the daily reports covering the five-year period including those from July last year using the term "combat," which the ministry initially claimed had been discarded but later released in response to an information disclosure request by a freelance journalist.
The ministry has come under fire in the Diet over the case and is likely to face questions as to whether it has kept documents properly in response to information disclosure requests.
Defense Minister Tomomi Inada revealed the storage of all daily reports over the five-year period in response to a question from Democratic Party lawmaker Yuichi Goto during a Feb. 17 session of the House of Representatives Budget Committee. The ministry said separately that it found daily reports dating back to Jan. 16, 2012. The electronic documents were found in the office of Joint Staff at the ministry, just as the daily reports from July 2016.
Read the full story at The Mainichi