Japan Armed Forces

Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa declared Monday that failure to enact bills authorizing the dispatch of Japan's armed forces overseas for peacekeeping missions would make Japan look like a "strange" nation to the rest of the world. He also said the deceleration of Japan's economy is at an end and predicted that statistics for the January-March period, when announced in June, will show that an upward climb has begun.

Hundreds of Japanese sailors on a small flotilla of warships departed for the Indian Ocean today, making good on Japan's pledge to support U.S.-led forces in the war against terrorism. It was Japan's first military contingent since World War II to be deployed in support of forces involved in combat. Ten years ago Japan agreed to send minesweepers to the Persian Gulf only after the Gulf War was over.

Hundreds of Japanese sailors on a small flotilla of warships departed for the Indian Ocean today, making good on Japan's pledge to support U.S.-led forces in the war against terrorism. It was Japan's first military contingent since World War II to be deployed in support of forces involved in combat. Ten years ago Japan agreed to send minesweepers to the Persian Gulf only after the Gulf War was over.

Ten years ago, a frail 67-year-old South Korean woman broke half a century of silence and publicly spoke of her torment as a sex slave for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Hak Soon Kim told how she and countless other impoverished Asian girls and women were snatched from their homes to serve Japanese soldiers, who beat and raped them.

Midway through a genteel, abstract discussion about America and Asia here last month, a Japanese businessman suddenly launched into a tirade about the difficulties his company was having in China. The Chinese make promises and don't keep them, he fumed. They sign contracts and then try to change the terms. I started to tune out. Over the years, I've heard a zillion similar complaints. Doing business in China is legendarily frustrating. Nothing new about that.

For nearly any country, the prospect of winning a permanent seat, with veto power, on the United Nations Security Council would be a welcome symbol of international influence and power. Not so for Japan. Here, the issue of whether to seek the U.N. seat has divided a nation that is still trying to bring World War II to a close 50 years after the fighting ended.

Ten years ago, a frail 67-year-old South Korean woman broke half a century of silence and publicly spoke of her torment as a sex slave for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Hak Soon Kim told how she and countless other impoverished Asian girls and women were snatched from their homes to serve Japanese soldiers, who beat and raped them.

Here, by a grove of cherry trees whose thick, dark canopy trembles with a flock of brilliantly white doves, stands the altar of Japanese militarism. The spirits of foot soldiers and generals, cannon fodder and war criminals are enshrined as deities in this place and rest eternally, without judgment, blame or sin. At Yasukuni Jinja, the "Shrine of the Nation at Peace," stoop-backed widows pray for the repose of their husbands who fell in Manchuria.

In a major setback for advocates of stronger separation of religion and state in Japan, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday against a Christian woman who sued the government for violating her rights by enshrining her husband in a Shinto ceremony after he died on military duty. The high court overturned two lower-court rulings that the "personal religious rights" of the widow, Yasuko Nakaya, 54, had been violated by Self-Defense Forces officials who helped in the enshrinement over her objections.

Through three generations, the dead Japanese soldier's diary remained tucked away in Albert Elsbernd's bottom desk drawer, a mysterious journal in a complicated foreign script, a former enemy's thoughts on a war waged half a century ago. Picked up in a battle-scarred building in the Philippines in 1945, brought home to a 14-year-old Elsbernd by a returning U. S. soldier, the indecipherable chronicle was treasured as a young boy's war memento.

A Japanese fighter jet conducting training on the northern island of Hokkaido mistakenly strafed a parking lot, smashing the rear window of a car and penetrating the roof of a garage. There were no injuries, police spokesman Akihiro Ishikawa said. But the Defense Ministry apologized and suspended all Air Self-Defense Force training involving shooting.

A former Japanese naval officer, arrested last year in Japan's biggest spy scandal in two decades, was handed a 10-month jail sentence today for passing military secrets to Russia, a court official said. Shigehiro Hagisaki, 38, a former lieutenant commander in the Maritime Self-Defense Force, was arrested in September on suspicion of giving classified documents to a Russian attache.

We will never see their faces, hear their cries or know their names. But Japanese journalist Yayori Matsui is among activists determined to keep the memories of 200,000 murdered girls alive. And to change the attitudes that made possible the tragedy of their brief lives and brutal deaths during World War II. Matsui, chairwoman of the Violence Against Women in War Network in Japan and a chief organizer of the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery (held Dec.

Midway through a genteel, abstract discussion about America and Asia here last month, a Japanese businessman suddenly launched into a tirade about the difficulties his company was having in China. The Chinese make promises and don't keep them, he fumed. They sign contracts and then try to change the terms. I started to tune out. Over the years, I've heard a zillion similar complaints. Doing business in China is legendarily frustrating. Nothing new about that.

Police on Friday arrested a senior Japanese naval officer suspected of passing secrets to a Russian Embassy official--a move that comes just three days after Japan and Russia pledged to cooperate in regional security. The 38-year-old officer, a researcher at Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies, is accused of handing over classified documents to a Russian military attache in Tokyo on several occasions, said Masatoshi Konomi, a spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police.

In a hangar at Van Nuys Airport sits a once-airborne connection to World War II. The war bird conjures up images of machine-gun fire, shot up planes dueling in the skies and kamikazes crashing into the sea. Aviation experts say only half a dozen Japanese-made Mitsubishi Zeros are left and one of them, a 1943 model, is being repaired by airplane mechanic Peter Regina.

The Japanese Striking Force The Japanese carrier striking task force that attacked Pearl Harbor set sail from the Kuril Islands on Nov. 26. It was made up of six aircraft carriers, two battleships and had a support force of nine destroyers, one light cruiser, two heavy cruisers and eight tankers. Three I-class submarines were positioned in front of the task force to act as scouts. U.S. Ships That Missed the Attack Many ships of the U.S. fleet were not present at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

The diminutive military commander who devised the operational plan for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would many years later win a U.S. decoration for his contributions to American security. But he never apologized for his World War II role and contended that the only problem with the Pearl Harbor raid was that Japan failed to follow it up aggressively enough. Proud and ramrod-straight at 5 feet 3 inches and 103 pounds, sharp-featured Minoru Genda remained devoted to his career to the end.

In a hangar at Van Nuys Airport, a relic of World War II conjures up images of machine gun fire, shot-up planes smashing into U.S. warships and kamikaze pilots crashing into the sea. Aviation experts say only half a dozen Japanese-made Mitsubishi Zeros are left, and one of them, a 1943 model, is being repaired by airplane mechanic Peter Regina in Van Nuys.

One of the great cliches commonly accepted in this country is that China is the rising power in Asia. You can hear this fashionable belief everywhere, whether in academic seminars, political debates or working-class bars. Yet within the depths of the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community, one hears a contrary argument, It goes like this: There are two rising powers in Asia. Two? You guessed it. China and Japan. Japan's attitude toward its military is quietly transforming.