Japan Defense Chief Insists Civilian Control of SDF Working

April 5, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera insisted Thursday that the civilian control of the Self-Defense Forces is working, even though the Ground SDF neglected for over a year to report the existence of documents requested by lawmakers.

"If the civilian control hadn't worked, the problem wouldn't have been made public yet," Onodera told the House of Councillors Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. He announced the GSDF's reporting failure on Wednesday.

Onodera claimed that the announcement came as a result of a reinvestigation he ordered when he was told on Saturday that the daily activity logs of the GSDF 2004-2006 mission in Iraq, which the government initially declared "nonexistent," were found.

Earlier this week, the ministry explained the Iraq reports were found in January this year.

But the documents were actually discovered in late March 2017, during a special inspection of the Defense Ministry over a cover-up scandal involving similar daily reports from GSDF troops dispatched to South Sudan. The discovery was not reported to then Defense Minister Tomomi Inada.

The reporting failure is "a big problem and very regrettable," Onodera said. "We'll exercise civilian control to shed full light on the matter."

He said he will create an investigation team headed by Parliamentary Vice Defense Minister Keitaro Ono. Onodera pledged to report to the Diet, the country's parliament, after clarifying through the investigation whether the failure amounts to a cover-up of the documents.

Democratic Party lawmaker Hiroyuki Konishi urged Onodera to resign. But the minister refused, saying he will deal with the current situation.

After the SDF Joint Staff recognized the discovery on Feb. 27 this year, the matter was reported to Administrative Vice Chief of Staff Atsuo Suzuki on March 5, according to Suzuki.

Kenichi Takahashi, director-general of the minister's Secretariat, received a report on the problem on March 29, followed by Vice Defense Minister Katashi Toyota and GSDF Chief of Staff Katsutoshi Kawano the next day, Suzuki also said.

The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and five other opposition parties agreed at a meeting of their Diet affairs chiefs on Thursday that the failure to disclose the document discovery for more than a year represents an "extremely serious situation."

The opposition parties confirmed plans to demand Diet testimony by Inada, then Vice Defense Minister Tetsuro Kuroe and then GSDF Chief of Staff Toshiya Okabe. Jiji Press