GSDF’s South Sudan daily logs newly found

April 10, 2018

Tokyo- Daily reports covering more than one year of Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force troops' activities in South Sudan where they were dispatched to join a UN peacekeeping mission have been newly found, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said Monday.

The daily activity logs had been kept at the Defense Ministry's Defense Intelligence Headquarters, Onodera told a meeting of the House of Councillors Audit Committee, answering a question from Kaneshige Wakamatsu, a member of Komeito, the coalition partner of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

The discovery resulted from work to find any undiscovered daily reports from all Self-Defense Forces troops dispatched overseas, according to the minister. The GSDF sent troops to the African country between 2012 and 2017 to take part in the UN Mission in South Sudan, or UNMISS.

According to the ministry, the newly found reports included the daily logs for July 8-12, 2016. The ministry once refused to meet a request for information disclosure of the documents for the period, saying no such logs existed.

The log for July 7 that year, which the ministry also decided not to disclose in the past, was not found this time.

"We can't help but think that the ministry's response was inappropriate," Onodera said. "I offer my apologies again as defense minister."

The Defense Intelligence Headquarters was not covered by the special inspection of the ministry conducted between March and July last year after the cover-up of South Sudan logs came to light.

At the committee meeting, Wakamatsu urged Onodera to take measures, including a possible revision of the public records management law, to prevent any recurrence of similar problems.

In making the request, Wakamatsu cited the recent discovery of daily activity reports on the GSDF's 2004-2006 mission in Iraq, for which the ministry had denied the existence, and the Finance Ministry's falsification of documents related to a controversial deep discount sale of a state land lot to private school operator Moritomo Gakuen.

At the same committee, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stressed that the government will fully review ways to keep public documents, including a possible law amendment. Abe also referred to the possibility of revamping related organizations. Jiji Press