Japan to ask US military to avoid flights over schools

December 16, 2017

Tokyo- Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Friday that the government will ask the US forces in the nation to strictly ensure that US military aircraft will not fly over schools and other facilities.

The top government spokesman showed the plan at a meeting in Tokyo with Takeshi Onaga, governor of the southernmost Japan prefecture of Okinawa, after a window frame of a US Marine Corps helicopter fell onto the playground of an elementary school in Ginowan, Okinawa, on Wednesday. The school is adjacent to the Marine Corps' Futenma air station.

At the meeting with Suga, Onaga said that "I can't help but feel strong anger" over the incident.

Onaga requested that the Japanese government call on the US military to conduct emergency inspections of all of its aircraft in Okinawa and ground them until the checks are complete. He also asked the government to urge the US military not to fly its aircraft over facilities such as hospitals.

A 1996 Japan-US agreement on measures to control noise from aircraft at the Futenma base calls on the US military to set flight routes by avoiding densely populated areas including schools and hospitals as much as possible.

Suga said the government hopes to make sure that the rule is thoroughly implemented.

Onaga also requested that training of Futenma-based US military aircraft be moved out of Okinawa and Japan on a long-term basis.

Also on Friday, Toshihiro Nikai, secretary-general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, met with Joseph Young, deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Tokyo.

Nikai asked the US side to understand the feelings of the people of Okinawa, according to sources with access to the meeting.

Meanwhile, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and other opposition parties asked the LDP to convene an off-session meeting of the Security Committee of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, Japan's parliament, for discussions on the fall of the window frame of the US military helicopter. Jiji Press