In a sign of brewing anti-American sentiment Japan today condemned the US Navy for allowing civilians at control stations on the nuclear submarine that sank a Japanese trawler leaving nine missing last week off Hawaii.
"It is outrageous. [The US Navy] is slack", Defence Agency chief Mr Toshitsugu Saito said at a news conference.
US President George W. Bush ordered a review of all policies on civilian activity during military exercises after the USS Greenevillewith two civilians sitting at control positions, surfaced rapidly, hitting and sinking the Japanese trawler carrying high-school fisheries students.
Nine of the 35 aboard are still missing, including four 17-year-old students. All are presumed dead and entombed in their training trawler at the seabottom.
"We should hate the crime but not the people", Mr Ietaka Hirota, principal of the Uwajima Fisheries High School, said in a speech at his first school-morning assembly after returning from Hawaii late yesterday.
Two of the 16 visitors invited aboard the submarine for a brief training cruise were allowed to be at control positions but they told US media they were strictly supervised.
The navy's preliminary investigation into the tragedy could be completed by the end of this week, the Pentagon said yesterday.
US Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld said there was no evidence that the presence of civilians aboard the USS Greenevillemay have contributed to the collision.
But Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said Tokyo would continue to urge Washington to keep up its search for the nine missing and to salvage the Japanese vessel.