Japan drafts remote island defense plan out of China concern

Asian Political News, Jan 18, 2005

TOKYO, Jan. 16 Kyodo

Japan has prepared a plan to defend the southern remote islands off Kyushu and Okinawa from possible invasion amid rising security concerns about China, according to papers obtained Saturday by Kyodo News.

The Defense Agency compiled the plan last November on the assumption of a foreign invasion of the islands located in a 1,000-kilometer zone between the southern end of Kyushu and Taiwan.

Thousands of such islands are scattered in the area. The Senkaku Islands, claimed by Japan and China, are among them.

The plan calls for a dispatch of 55,000 members of the Ground Self-Defense Force as well as warplanes, destroyers and submarines from Japan's main islands in case the remote islands are attacked.

''Self-Defense Forces do not have troops stationed on most of the southern remote islands and they are a vacuum in terms of security,'' said a senior Defense Agency official.

''China has been expanding its scope of activities as seen in the case of an invasion of Japanese territorial waters (by a Chinese nuclear submarine) last November. We need to monitor its moves,'' the official said.

Under the defense plan, patrol planes of the Maritime Self-Defense Force and the airborne warning and control system of the Air Self-Defense Force would collect information on the remote islands.

Fighters, submarines and destroyers dispatched from the Kyushu and Chugoku regions in western Japan would be divided into two groups to prevent aggressors from landing on the islands or block their supply routes.

Of the 55,000 GSDF personnel, 9,000 would be assigned to directly recapture invaded islands and the others will provide rear-area support for them.

The GSDF will mobilize its Western Army Infantry Regiment based in Nagasaki Prefecture, which consists of specially trained soldiers in charge of defending remote islands, and members of a planned rapid deployment force. They will descend onto the islands from the air.

Those stationed in several bases in Kyushu are to be sent to the islands onboard transport ships of the Maritime Self-Defense Force.

The infantry regiment was established in 2002 as part of the Defense Agency's review of its unit deployment plan. The agency historically had heavier defenses on the northern island of Hokkaido on concerns of a Soviet invasion during the Cold War.

The agency is also scheduled to launch the rapid deployment force, which will consist of Airborne Brigades, to boost the security of the southern remote islands.

Last September, the agency presented in its report scenarios of Chinese invasions of Japan. The report indicated possible attacks by China over a territorial dispute with Japan over the Senkaku Islands and illegal operations by Beijing over maritime resources in the East China Sea.

The Ground Staff Office of the GSDF previously drafted a plan to cope with cross-strait military conflicts between China and Taiwan. But the new defense plan is the first penned by the agency on the assumption of an invasion of the southern remote islands.