Japan Press Weekly

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2008 April 23 - 29 [SDF]

GSDF member arrested for murder

A 19-year-old member of the Ground Self-Defense Forces was arrested on April 22 for allegedly killing a taxi driver in Aira Town, Kagoshima Prefecture.

The suspect, a private first class in the 1st Infantry Regiment at Camp Nerima in Tokyo, told the police that he wanted to be sentenced to death for murder, according to the police.

He is suspected of stabbing 58-year-old taxi driver, Kamizono Saburo, in the neck with a knife at around 2:30 a.m. of April 22, and made a phone call to a police station from an unmanned police box admitting that he committed murder.

According to the GSDF, he was from Hokkaido and became a GSDF member last March. After he went missing on March 21, his family filed a missing person report.

This case is very similar to the murder of a taxi driver by a U.S. serviceman in Yokosuka City in March as the GSDF member reportedly said that he has no intention to steal money but only wanted to kill someone. The two are both suspected of committing murder after deserting the military.

The SDF is now attempting to enable itself to conduct overseas operations as its main task in order to support the U.S. preemptive wars. Expecting that it will fight in battlefields abroad, each SDF unit is strengthening urban-combat drills and close-quarters combat drills.

At the same time major changes are taking place in the SDF, sexual harassment in the SDF as well as SDF personnel’s attacks and indecent assaults against citizens have continuously occurred. Suspects’ abnormal mental conditions may not be the only reason for the increase in crimes by military personnel.
- Akahata, April 23, 2008