Japan Press Weekly

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2013 June 12 - 18 [US FORCES]

US military resumes suspended live-fire drill

The U.S. Marine Corps on June 15 resumed its live-shell training exercise at the Self-Defense Force’s Yausubetsu training site in eastern Hokkaido without obtaining local consent.

The training exercise had been suspended since June 11 when a shell landed outside the training site, four kilometers away from the target. On June 14, the U.S. Forces suddenly informed Hokkaido Prefecture and municipalities concerned through the Defense Ministry’s Hokkaido Bureau that they will resume the drill on the next day.

Hokkaido Prefecture and the four neighboring towns to the training site, (Bekkai, Akkeshi, Hamanaka, Shibecha), on June 15 held a meeting in Bekkai to discuss the matter, and jointly submitted a written protest to the Hokkaido Defense Bureau.

On the next day, members of local residents’ groups rallied in front of a gate of the Yausubetsu site to demonstrate against the restart of the training using live shells and presented a letter of protest to the bureau.

Moritaka Tetsuo, who heads a residents’ group in Bekkai Town, said, “The Defense Ministry allows the U.S. to restart the live-fire training exercise and ignores the concerns of local municipalities and residents. We can hardly accept it.”

The U.S. Forces conducted live-shell firing training exercises in Yausubetsu under the pretext of lightening military burdens on Okinawa. This is the 13th drill of this kind held there.

According to a local peace group, they observed 123 artillery shells fired by evening and 76 during the night on June 15, and on the next day, the number of shells fired reached 159 between 8:45 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.