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Canada News.Net
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Canada News.Net
"Spend on rice, not missiles": Japanese call for peace on battle anniversary
ITOMAN, Japan, June 25 (Xinhua) -- "Money should be spent on rice, not missiles," Kunio Aragaki, an Okinawan resident, told Xinhua on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Okinawa. Japanese citizens have gathered here to memorize the war dead and voice strong opposition to the government's growing defense spending and military buildup. Up to 80 years after the war in which about one-quarter of Okinawa's population died, the region continues to sit at the forefront of Japan's intensified security posture, bearing the heavy burden of hosting U.S. military bases. During memorial events held in recent days, Japanese citizens urged the government to reflect on its security policies and avoid repeating the mistakes of war. On Monday, a memorial ceremony was held at the Peace Memorial Park in Mabuni, Itoman City. Visitors from across Japan gathered before stone monuments etched with the names of the dead to mourn loved ones and pray for peace. Chihiro Yoshinaga, a local Okinawan, came with his son to honor his great-grandfather, a schoolteacher killed during the battle. "I want my child to know how horrifying that war was. What matters most is never forgetting what happened," he told reporters. At a separate ceremony the night before, Tomoko Nishizaki from Okayama Prefecture shared that her father-in-law died in the battle, and the pain it caused to the family remains. "We've been coming here for decades, I truly pray for peace," she said. While remembering the past, many residents are alarmed by the Japanese government's recent moves that they believe risk turning Okinawa into a front line once again. Japan has significantly increased its defense spending in recent years. In late 2022, it passed new national security policies, aiming to raise defense expenditures to around 43 trillion yen (about 296 billion U.S. dollars) between fiscal years 2023 and 2027, equivalent to 2 percent of GDP by 2027. "This is very dangerous. Expanding the defense budget and military buildup will only cause concern among neighboring countries," said Okinawan resident Takamatsu Gushiken. "Peace should not be maintained through force, but through dialogue and diplomacy with our neighbors." Gushiken also voiced concern over Japan's growing military presence in the southwest. "Self-Defense Force bases in Okinawa keep expanding. It's a dangerous trend, and it needs to stop." In the Peace Memorial Park, resident Kunio Aragaki organized a sticker poll asking people whether they supported the deployment of long-range missiles in Okinawa. The response was overwhelmingly negative. "As you can see, nearly everyone here opposes it. We are completely against military buildup in the southwest," he told Xinhua. Aragaki added that the continued expansion of the defense budget is misguided. "That money should be spent on rice, not missiles. Rice prices have been soaring recently," he said. Remembering history, citizens stressed, is essential to avoiding future conflict. "We need to think about why the country once went to war," Gushiken said. "And when we reflect on that, we must not only look from our own perspective, but also consider the viewpoint of others. If we don't, our understanding of history is incomplete." "We must never forget the harm we've caused to others," he added.
Miami Herald
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Key US Ally Quietly Prepares for China's Pacific War With America
Japan will begin building bomb shelters next year on its remote islands closest to Taiwan amid fears that its far western territory could become a legitimate target for Chinese missiles if China and the United States go to war. The plans point to a possible scenario in which Beijing orders preemptive strikes against major U.S. and allied bases in the Pacific before launching an amphibious invasion by sea and air across the Taiwan Strait to achieve what strategists call a fait accompli. They also acknowledge the complex reality that Japan—the U.S. treaty ally hosting the most American troops anywhere in the world outside of U.S. territory—will in all probability not avoid the spillover of a superpower conflict so near its shores. The Communist Party claims democratically governed Taiwan as part of Chinese territory, despite Taipei's objections. China refuses to rule out the use of force to unify the island with the mainland, and a widening hard power imbalance across the Taiwan Strait is fueling concerns that Beijing could soon compel Taipei with the threat of a hot war. U.S. officials say Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered his armies to be ready to take Taiwan by force by 2027. Whether the military capability will be matched by political intent cannot be known. Taiwan is a core issue in the U.S.-China relationship, Beijing's officials say. At Asia's top security forum in Singapore last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said China's military was "rehearsing for the real deal," and that an attack "could be imminent." Beijing accused him of trying to stoke confrontation. Washington has no formal diplomatic ties with Taipei but is bound by U.S. law to arm Taiwan and assist in its self-defense. Former President Joe Biden suggested he was prepared to defend Taiwan with American forces. President Donald Trump has kept his cards closer to the vest. What is certain is that the United States likely cannot win a Pacific war against China without the help of Japan, whose vast territory of more than 14,000 islands spans 1,000 miles across the first and second island chains in the West Pacific. Japan's Self-Defense Force is among the world's most well-armed militaries thanks in part to historically strong heavy industry and U.S. export licenses for the production of platforms like the F-35 stealth jet and the future operation of weapons like the Tomahawk cruise missile. And although Japan's constitution explicitly renounces the use of force, Tokyo's reinterpretation of the document in recent years may allow its military to perform collective self-defense alongside U.S. and allied forces, even if Japan itself is not attacked. The Japanese government will subsidize the construction of long-stay evacuation facilities in municipalities in the Sakishima archipelago at the end of its Nansei or southwest island chain, starting next year with the westernmost inhabited territory of Yonaguni, less than 70 miles east of Taiwan. More bomb shelters—equipped with facilities for stays of up to two weeks—will be built on the neighboring islands of Iriomote, Ishigaki, Tarama and Miyako by spring 2028, Japan's Nikkei newspaper reported this week. Okinawa, the largest of Japan's southwestern islands, hosts around 30,000 of the 54,000 active-duty American service members in Japan. The U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army and Marine Corps all operate bases on the Pacific node, with U.S.-Japan joint training exercises reaching all the way to Yonaguni. Officials in Tokyo plan to evacuate residents to the country's main islands long before hostilities begin. However, official estimates indicate sea and air evacuations of more than 100,000 civilians during a Taiwan Strait crisis could take nearly a week. The emergency shelters would act as a backstop to house up to 200 people who are left behind. The buildup to a possible major war is palpable to the islanders, who have expressed angst about being on the front line of what their government calls a "Taiwan contingency." "The plan is very detailed and I felt a strong sense of crisis in the remote border islands," Gen Nakatani, Japan's defense minister, said at a news conference in January while reviewing Yonaguni's evacuation measures. The preparations are as necessary as they are uncomfortable; the worst-case planning does not presume a peaceful end to a decades-long dispute that in many ways resembles China's most formidable hurdle in its pursuit of true superpower status against a resistant United States. "China's military expansion in recent years and its attempts to unilaterally change the regional status quo have aroused a high degree of vigilance in democratic countries like Japan, the United States and in the European Union," Taiwan's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hsiao Kuang-wei told Newsweek. Taipei welcomes the international community's continued attention to the security situation in the Taiwan Strait and in the region, Hsiao said. The U.S. State Department referred Newsweek to the government of Japan, which did not respond to written requests for comment. China's Foreign Ministry also did not respond. Beijing's modern military is on the march, with ambitions of global supremacy that stretch far beyond Taiwan, to the Arctic and even to space. Intensive Chinese military activity in Taiwan's surrounding sea and airspace is now the norm, yet they increase still. Last year, Taipei tracked over 3,000 Chinese warplane sorties in its air defense zone, nearly double the figure recorded in each of the previous two years, according to PLATracker, a public dataset maintained by U.S. analysts Gerald C. Brown and Benjamin Lewis. Taiwan's own defense reforms have progressed steadily, but not fast enough for many of its supporters in the United States. The island's political, military and civic leaders, however, are applying lessons from Russia's war in Ukraine: how to win international support, how to use sea drones and HIMARS rocket launchers and how to resist. The U.S. and Japanese militaries have witnessed some of the biggest shifts in defense posture, both individually and collectively as an alliance. The Pentagon is overseeing a fundamental change in warfighting doctrine across the U.S. armed services as part of a pivot to the Indo-Pacific theater, where seas are wide, islands are many and continental land is scarce. In Japan, the larger of the Sakishima islands—Yonaguni, Miyako and Ishigaki—have each hosted new Japanese army bases in the last 10 years. On Yonaguni, whose population is only 1,500, a Patriot missile unit operates a battery of advanced PAC-3 interceptor systems, and long-range radar stations in the mountains watch Chinese forces daily. This week, Japan's army conducted its first missile test on Japanese territory, firing a Type 88 short-range surface-to-ship missile on its northernmost main island of Hokkaido. Tokyo is also acquiring long-range counterstrike weapons—the U.S.-made Tomahawk and its own Type 12 missile—that can reach China's coast. Defense planners are not discounting the possibility that China could move on the disputed Senkaku or Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea, around 100 miles north of the Sakishima group. U.S. and Japanese soldiers have trained together to retake Japan's remote islands from enemy forces and this year simulated anti-ship strikes on maritime choke points used by the Chinese navy. The U.S.-Japan alliance is open about the perceived China threat in ways that the U.S.-South Korea alliance cannot be. Seoul fears that a diversion of American strength from the Korean Peninsula could invite trouble at the Demilitarized Zone with Kim Jong Un's North. Bryce Barros, nonresident associate fellow at the Bratislava-based Globsec group, told Newsweek: "The decision to publicize these preparations may also point to deeper coordination between Japan and Taiwan than is openly acknowledged. "More broadly, it raises important questions for other countries in the region. For example, I'd be curious to see what measures Filipino authorities are taking for islands in the Bashi Channel, which would also be on the frontline of any cross-strait crisis." Tsun-yen Wang, associate research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, told Newsweek: "It should not be ruled out that those shelters may also be utilized for housing and aiding refugees fleeing from Taiwan. "The 'Taiwan refugees' concern was raised about two years ago, and discussion of this issue may well conjure up the Japanese people's memory of finding 'boat people' at the end of the Vietnam War." The Trump administration is prioritizing a strategy of "denial" to deter a Chinese attack on Taiwan, Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby said in his confirmation hearing earlier this year. Unlike deterrence by punishment, which threatens consequences like economic sanctions, a strategy of denial seeks to convince an aggressor that its objectives are unobtainable, by making the likelihood of a catastrophic military defeat more credible. To achieve denial against a peer adversary like China, the United States may need to clearly signal a readiness to intervene, in what would be a test of the American public's appetite for more war. In a poll released by the Ronald Reagan Institute this month, seven in 10 Americans said they would support U.S. military action to defend Taiwan. Related Articles China in Sea Resource Dispute With US AllyUS Ambassador Calls Out Chinese Counterpart Over X Post: 'Untrained Puppy'Mapped: How China Staged Double Aircraft Carrier Show of Force in PacificPhotos Show US Air Force Training for Pacific War 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Newsweek
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Key US Ally Quietly Prepares for China's Pacific War With America
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Japan will begin building bomb shelters next year on its remote islands closest to Taiwan amid fears that its far western territory could become a legitimate target for Chinese missiles if China and the United States go to war. The plans point to a possible scenario in which Beijing orders preemptive strikes against major U.S. and allied bases in the Pacific before launching an amphibious invasion by sea and air across the Taiwan Strait to achieve what strategists call a fait accompli. They also acknowledge the complex reality that Japan—the U.S. treaty ally hosting the most American troops anywhere in the world outside of U.S. territory—will in all probability not avoid the spillover of a superpower conflict so near its shores. The Core of Core Issues The Communist Party claims democratically governed Taiwan as part of Chinese territory, despite Taipei's objections. China refuses to rule out the use of force to unify the island with the mainland, and a widening hard power imbalance across the Taiwan Strait is fueling concerns that Beijing could soon compel Taipei with the threat of a hot war. U.S. officials say Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered his armies to be ready to take Taiwan by force by 2027. Whether the military capability will be matched by political intent cannot be known. Taiwan is a core issue in the U.S.-China relationship, Beijing's officials say. At Asia's top security forum in Singapore last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said China's military was "rehearsing for the real deal," and that an attack "could be imminent." Beijing accused him of trying to stoke confrontation. Washington has no formal diplomatic ties with Taipei but is bound by U.S. law to arm Taiwan and assist in its self-defense. Former President Joe Biden suggested he was prepared to defend Taiwan with American forces. President Donald Trump has kept his cards closer to the vest. What is certain is that the United States likely cannot win a Pacific war against China without the help of Japan, whose vast territory of more than 14,000 islands spans 1,000 miles across the first and second island chains in the West Pacific. Japan's Self-Defense Force is among the world's most well-armed militaries thanks in part to historically strong heavy industry and U.S. export licenses for the production of platforms like the F-35 stealth jet and the future operation of weapons like the Tomahawk cruise missile. And although Japan's constitution explicitly renounces the use of force, Tokyo's reinterpretation of the document in recent years may allow its military to perform collective self-defense alongside U.S. and allied forces, even if Japan itself is not attacked. The Plan The Japanese government will subsidize the construction of long-stay evacuation facilities in municipalities in the Sakishima archipelago at the end of its Nansei or southwest island chain, starting next year with the westernmost inhabited territory of Yonaguni, less than 70 miles east of Taiwan. More bomb shelters—equipped with facilities for stays of up to two weeks—will be built on the neighboring islands of Iriomote, Ishigaki, Tarama and Miyako by spring 2028, Japan's Nikkei newspaper reported this week. Left to right: Imagery captured by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellites on May 31 shows the Yaeyama islands of Yonaguni, Iriomote and Ishigaki, part of the Sakishima archipelago in southwestern Japan. Left to right: Imagery captured by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellites on May 31 shows the Yaeyama islands of Yonaguni, Iriomote and Ishigaki, part of the Sakishima archipelago in southwestern Japan. Copernicus Okinawa, the largest of Japan's southwestern islands, hosts around 30,000 of the 54,000 active-duty American service members in Japan. The U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army and Marine Corps all operate bases on the Pacific node, with U.S.-Japan joint training exercises reaching all the way to Yonaguni. Officials in Tokyo plan to evacuate residents to the country's main islands long before hostilities begin. However, official estimates indicate sea and air evacuations of more than 100,000 civilians during a Taiwan Strait crisis could take nearly a week. The emergency shelters would act as a backstop to house up to 200 people who are left behind. The buildup to a possible major war is palpable to the islanders, who have expressed angst about being on the front line of what their government calls a "Taiwan contingency." "The plan is very detailed and I felt a strong sense of crisis in the remote border islands," Gen Nakatani, Japan's defense minister, said at a news conference in January while reviewing Yonaguni's evacuation measures. A Japan Air Self-Defense Force C-2 transport aircraft takes off at Miho Air Base in Sakaiminato in Japan's western Tottori prefecture on June 21, heading to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa for a possible... A Japan Air Self-Defense Force C-2 transport aircraft takes off at Miho Air Base in Sakaiminato in Japan's western Tottori prefecture on June 21, heading to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa for a possible evacuation of Japanese nationals from the Middle East. More Kyodo via AP The preparations are as necessary as they are uncomfortable; the worst-case planning does not presume a peaceful end to a decades-long dispute that in many ways resembles China's most formidable hurdle in its pursuit of true superpower status against a resistant United States. "China's military expansion in recent years and its attempts to unilaterally change the regional status quo have aroused a high degree of vigilance in democratic countries like Japan, the United States and in the European Union," Taiwan's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hsiao Kuang-wei told Newsweek. Taipei welcomes the international community's continued attention to the security situation in the Taiwan Strait and in the region, Hsiao said. The U.S. State Department referred Newsweek to the government of Japan, which did not respond to written requests for comment. China's Foreign Ministry also did not respond. The Fight Beijing's modern military is on the march, with ambitions of global supremacy that stretch far beyond Taiwan, to the Arctic and even to space. Intensive Chinese military activity in Taiwan's surrounding sea and airspace is now the norm, yet they increase still. Last year, Taipei tracked over 3,000 Chinese warplane sorties in its air defense zone, nearly double the figure recorded in each of the previous two years, according to PLATracker, a public dataset maintained by U.S. analysts Gerald C. Brown and Benjamin Lewis. Taiwan's own defense reforms have progressed steadily, but not fast enough for many of its supporters in the United States. The island's political, military and civic leaders, however, are applying lessons from Russia's war in Ukraine: how to win international support, how to use sea drones and HIMARS rocket launchers and how to resist. The U.S. and Japanese militaries have witnessed some of the biggest shifts in defense posture, both individually and collectively as an alliance. The Pentagon is overseeing a fundamental change in warfighting doctrine across the U.S. armed services as part of a pivot to the Indo-Pacific theater, where seas are wide, islands are many and continental land is scarce. In Japan, the larger of the Sakishima islands—Yonaguni, Miyako and Ishigaki—have each hosted new Japanese army bases in the last 10 years. On Yonaguni, whose population is only 1,500, a Patriot missile unit operates a battery of advanced PAC-3 interceptor systems, and long-range radar stations in the mountains watch Chinese forces daily. Japan's army on June 24 test-fires a Type 88 surface-to-ship short-range missile at the Shizunai Anti-Air Firing Range on Japan's northern main island of Hokkaido in its first missile test on Japanese territory. Japan's army on June 24 test-fires a Type 88 surface-to-ship short-range missile at the Shizunai Anti-Air Firing Range on Japan's northern main island of Hokkaido in its first missile test on Japanese territory. Japan Ground Self-Defense Force via AP This week, Japan's army conducted its first missile test on Japanese territory, firing a Type 88 short-range surface-to-ship missile on its northernmost main island of Hokkaido. Tokyo is also acquiring long-range counterstrike weapons—the U.S.-made Tomahawk and its own Type 12 missile—that can reach China's coast. Defense planners are not discounting the possibility that China could move on the disputed Senkaku or Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea, around 100 miles north of the Sakishima group. U.S. and Japanese soldiers have trained together to retake Japan's remote islands from enemy forces and this year simulated anti-ship strikes on maritime choke points used by the Chinese navy. The U.S.-Japan alliance is open about the perceived China threat in ways that the U.S.-South Korea alliance cannot be. Seoul fears that a diversion of American strength from the Korean Peninsula could invite trouble at the Demilitarized Zone with Kim Jong Un's North. The Expert View Bryce Barros, nonresident associate fellow at the Bratislava-based Globsec group, told Newsweek: "The decision to publicize these preparations may also point to deeper coordination between Japan and Taiwan than is openly acknowledged. "More broadly, it raises important questions for other countries in the region. For example, I'd be curious to see what measures Filipino authorities are taking for islands in the Bashi Channel, which would also be on the frontline of any cross-strait crisis." Tsun-yen Wang, associate research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, told Newsweek: "It should not be ruled out that those shelters may also be utilized for housing and aiding refugees fleeing from Taiwan. "The 'Taiwan refugees' concern was raised about two years ago, and discussion of this issue may well conjure up the Japanese people's memory of finding 'boat people' at the end of the Vietnam War." Imagery captured by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellites on May 31 shows the island of Yonaguni, Japan's westernmost inhabited territory less than 70 miles east of Taiwan. Imagery captured by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellites on May 31 shows the island of Yonaguni, Japan's westernmost inhabited territory less than 70 miles east of Taiwan. Copernicus What Comes Next The Trump administration is prioritizing a strategy of "denial" to deter a Chinese attack on Taiwan, Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby said in his confirmation hearing earlier this year. Unlike deterrence by punishment, which threatens consequences like economic sanctions, a strategy of denial seeks to convince an aggressor that its objectives are unobtainable, by making the likelihood of a catastrophic military defeat more credible. To achieve denial against a peer adversary like China, the United States may need to clearly signal a readiness to intervene, in what would be a test of the American public's appetite for more war. In a poll released by the Ronald Reagan Institute this month, seven in 10 Americans said they would support U.S. military action to defend Taiwan.
Nikkei Asia
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Nikkei Asia
Japan to set up evacuation shelters on island near Taiwan by 2027
Defense Tokyo steps up civil protection plans in preparation for potential armed conflict Japan's Self-Defense Force personnels attend drills at Yonaguni Airport in Yonaguni Island, Okinawa, in 2024. © Kyodo RYUTO IMAO TOKYO -- The Japanese government will set up the country's first long-stay evacuation shelters on an island near Taiwan by the end of fiscal 2027 amid growing concerns over tensions in the Taiwan Strait. The construction of the first such shelters -- designed to allow evacuees to stay for around two weeks -- will start in fiscal 2026 on Yonaguni Island, Japan's westernmost island and part of the Sakishima Islands chain. Following Yonaguni, similar shelters will be built on neighboring municipalities of Ishigaki, Miyakojima, Taketomi and Tarama.
The Mainichi
16-06-2025
- Politics
- The Mainichi
Abandoned luggage and survival school for kids: Our 5 most-read stories from last week
We've listed our five most read stories on The Mainichi news site, from top to bottom, that were published between June 7 and 15. The first story was viewed by 18.8% of our regular readers. (The Mainichi) Inbound tourists abandoning luggage amid Osaka Expo trips causes disposal problems OSAKA -- Suitcases believed to have been abandoned mainly by foreign travelers are piling up across this city as it hosts Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, putting pressure on local accommodation providers as to how to respond. Full story. Japan group under fire for holding 'junior survival school' combat training for children TOKYO -- An organization in Saitama Prefecture has drawn criticism for holding "junior survival school" events featuring combat drills for elementary and junior high school children at public facilities in Tokyo's Itabashi and Suginami wards, sources have told the Mainichi Shimbun. Full story. What is the controversy surrounding Japan's Yasukuni shrine? Amid calls that Self-Defense Force members be honored at Tokyo's Yasukuni Jinja shrine if they die in war, some have questioned the legitimacy of such a move in light of the Japanese Constitution, which stipulates the separation of religion and state. The Mainichi Shimbun answers some common questions readers may have about the controversial shrine where Class-A war criminals are enshrined. Full story. Japan ruling parties mull cash handouts without income limit ahead of upper house race TOKYO -- The government and ruling coalition parties in Japan are considering using the surplus in national tax revenue for public cash handouts to counter soaring prices. A uniform handout in the range of tens of thousands of yen per person with no income restrictions has been proposed. Full story. TOKYO -- A Cabinet Office survey has found that 42.7% of seniors in Japan reported carrying out paid work, surpassing 40% for the first time. Full story.
