Defense Ministry Denies Organized Cover-Up of GSDF Iraq Logs

May 23, 2018

Tokyo- Japan's Defense Ministry on Wednesday denied an organized cover-up of daily logs on the Ground Self-Defense Force's Iraq mission, in a report of its probe into the documents the ministry initially claimed did not exist.

Over the problem, the ministry punished a total of 17 officials for their failure to carry out appropriate clerical work, including officials at the GSDF's former Ground Research and Development Command, now the Training, Evaluation, Research and Development Command. The then command officials took a pay cut or a reprimand.

In the top brass, Adm. Katsutoshi Kawano, chief of staff at the SDF Joint Staff, was admonished, and an oral warning was given to Vice Defense Minister Katashi Toyota.

The report attributed the former research department's failure to report the discovery of the documents in March 2017 to a lack of understanding about the probe, concluding that there was no deliberate cover-up.

In February last year, then Defense Minister Tomomi Inada verbally asked the Joint Staff about the existence of the documents, after telling parliament that the ministry could not find them.

The department found the documents on March 27 that year, but did not report this to Inada. It also denied the existence of the documents in reply to a disclosure request after the discovery.

The report said Masayoshi Tatsumi, then administrative vice chief of staff at the Joint Staff, instructed a Joint Staff member to search for the documents following the request for a fresh probe by Inada.

But Tatsumi did not order any specific search methods or confirm the result of the probe. He is among the 17 people punished.

The Joint Staff member requested relevant sections to search for the documents by telephone and email. But due to a lack of communication, those that received the request, including the research department, were not aware that Inada had instructed the probe.

An official at the department had been told by a predecessor that no materials were left on the GSDF's Iraq mission in 2004-2006, so the official replied to the fresh search request that there were no related documents, without asking supervisors.

Meanwhile, the supervisors thought they did not need to report the discovery of the documents on the Iraq mission, because they were searching for daily logs from SDF troops deployed in South Sudan when the Iraq documents were found.

The report found a "grave problem" that could have affected civilian control, current Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said, admitting that the ministry and the SDF could not follow an instruction by the former minister.

"We'll make all-out efforts to restore public trust by taking measures to prevent any repeat of the problem," Onodera said.

The investigation was led by Parliamentary Vice Defense Minister Keitaro Ono. Koichi Ueda, former head of the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office, also participated. Jiji Press