YOKOTA, Japan — North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has inadvertently added urgency to U.S. plans to realign its military forces in Japan and prompted Tokyo to seek even closer operational military ties with its American ally.
In the weeks after the North Korean launches of seven missiles into the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright, the Air Force officer who commands U.S. forces in Japan, said “a monumental change” has occurred in Japanese attitudes toward the transitions. Japanese officers, queried separately, agreed.
Although negotiations had been progressing, political pressures within Japan raised obstacles.
Opposition focused on local issues such as noise from aircraft in residential areas that have grown up around U.S. bases.
Those issues have not disappeared, but “Japan is on the cusp of major changes in security policy,” said a staff officer at Yokota Air Base.
Tokyo, for instance, has asked the United States to accelerate delivery of Patriot anti-missile batteries to Japan.
Reports that Mr. Kim may order a nuclear bomb test in North Korea have given more impetus to the revisions.
Adm. William J. Fallon, who commands U.S. forces in Asia and the Pacific from his headquarters in Hawaii, visited Japan last month. He met with Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, the front-runner to succeed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi later this month, and other political and military leaders in Tokyo.
The admiral also flew to Japan’s southwestern island of Kyushu to meet with Lt. Gen. Naoto Hayashi, who commands Japan’s western army, and Vice Adm. Yoji Koda, commander of the Japanese navy’s regional district.
The weight of Japan’s small but modern armed forces is shifting gradually from Hokkaido, where the northern army’s mission was to repel any Russian invasion.
Today, Japan sees a near-term threat from North Korea and a longer-range threat from China. Kyushu is closer to both than is Hokkaido.
“We are the ones out front now,” said a Japanese officer in the western army.
Timelines have been set for changes that will add up to a new look for both U.S. and Japanese forces by 2014.
In 2008, a forward element of 200 soldiers from the U.S. Army’s I Corps is to move from Fort Lewis in Washington state to Camp Zama, southwest of Tokyo, to prepare communications, a combat command center and support facilities for a joint task force headquarters.
At Yokota, the Japanese Air Defense Command will move from nearby Fuchu by 2010. A joint command center was set up in December, tested in exercises during the winter and operative on July 4, in time to collect intelligence on the North Korean missile launches.
Seeking to rectify a glaring lack of coordination and joint operations among the Japanese armed forces, Tokyo established a joint staff office in March along the lines of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.
Gen. Wright said the joint coordination center was intended to speed communications among Japan’s joint staff office, his headquarters at Yokota and the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii.
“Working together has tremendous power,” he said in a TV interview. “One plus one equals much more than two.”
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