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Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

What will Japan do with 'rapid response unit'?
Akahata editorial (excerpts)

The Defense Agency in its budget request for fiscal 2006 called for setting up within the Ground Self-Defense Force a central rapid response unit for military operations abroad.

Japan-U.S. military integration in progress

The 3,200-strong central rapid response unit will be made up of the command unit, the GSDF First Airborne (parachute) Brigade, the special operation group to counter terrorists and guerrillas, the First Helicopter Brigade, the unit in charge of defense against biological and chemical warfare, and an educational unit for training for combat abroad in international operations. It will command contingents made up of troops coming from various regions taking turns, functioning as a rapid deployment force.

The rapid response unit is designed to assist in U.S. wars abroad. The establishment of this unit was put forward in the Defense Program Outline approved by the government in December 2004 based on the government policy of sending troops abroad.

While commending the Koizumi Cabinet for supporting the Iraq War and dispatching the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq, the U.S. Bush administration is demanding that Japan deploy the SDF abroad to support the U.S. forces militarily at U.S. requests and gut Article 9 of the Constitution in order to enable the SDF to engage in combat in support of U.S. forces. The central rapid response unit will meet the U.S. request in providing the U.S. forces with such military support as logistics and supply indispensable for military combat operations, like that in the Iraq War. If Article 9 is adversely revised, the unit will become a spearhead for military actions abroad.

United Nations membership must not be used to justify sending troops abroad. Japan's U.N. membership was endorsed on the assumption that Japan is under no obligation to offer military cooperation. In its 1952 application for U.N. membership, the Japanese government stated that Japan is to perform its duty with all the means that it has constitutionally. Nishimura Kumao, the Foreign Ministry Treaties Bureau director at the time who drafted the application, later expounded on its implications in the Diet that Japan will not shoulder obligations under the U.N. Charter requiring military cooperation/military participation.

Conform to trend of peace

Calls for the peaceful settlement of international disputes based on the U.N. Charter are now growing in Asia and the rest of the world. The time calls for the constitutional principles of peace to show its full value. Japan will be able to win the trust of Asia and the rest of the world only by abiding by Article 9 and seeking a settlement of international disputes by peaceful means. -- Akahata, September 26, 2005