Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2014 January 15 - 21 [US FORCES]

Marines parachute onto land outside designated training site

During parachute landing training on January 14 at the U.S. Navy Ie Jima Auxiliary Airfield in Ie Village, Okinawa Prefecture, two U.S. marines landed on farmland outside the base.

Mislandings also occurred in May last year.

The parachute training exercise started around 9 a.m. One marine landed on a tobacco patch around 400 meters outside the base and another serviceman made a landing in a pasture about 10 meters from the base. No people and crops were damaged, according to the village office.

Japanese Communist Party member of the Village Assembly Naka Minoru said, “Though we have been calling on the U.S. military to not conduct parachute training on windy days, they carried out the exercise despite a heavy wind. Accidents of this kind frequently occur in defiance of repeated protests by the village assembly. The U.S. military should stop the training exercise before a serious accident happens.”