Japan Press Weekly

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2014 June 18 - 24 [POLITICS]

SDF makes arrangements for local gov’ts help for SDF families while troops are sent on overseas dispatches

Akahata on June 19 learned that a Ground Self-Defense Force camp in Hokkaido had made an arrangement with the camp-hosting city of Rumoi in January this year to have the local government give assistance to SDF member families while troops are sent on overseas missions.

This is the first agreement of its kind concluded between the military authority and municipalities hosting SDF bases.

This came forth shortly after the state decision to dispatch 56 GSDF personnel from Camp Rumoi in Hokkaido to Djibouti at the end of January, appearing to be new development accompanying Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s rightward ambitions.

In March, another GSDF camp in Hokkaido also signed a similar contract with the municipality where the camp is located.

Since the 2011 major quake disaster in northeast Japan, the SDF has won a commitment from local governments one after another to provide information or advice on things like childrearing and nursing-care public services to SDF families during the SDF’s disaster rescue activities in Japan.

The SDF obviously wants to expand the scope of this commitment from domestic life-saving missions to overseas military operations such as participation in the PKO in South Sudan and the antipiracy mission in the sea off Somalia.

In the National Defense Program Guidelines updated late last year, the Abe government states that the SDF “will implement various family support measures in order to alleviate the anxieties both of troops serving away from home and of their families while they are away”.

The latest SDF-municipality agreement may possibly become a step toward a home front support system while the Japanese military fights in wars abroad.