In a sign of brewing anti-American sentiment, Japan yesterday 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 navy] is slack," Japan's defence agency chief, Mr Toshitsugu Saito, said at a news conference.
President Bush ordered a review of all policies on civilian activity during military exercises after the USS Greeneville, with two civilians sitting at control positions, surfaced rapidly, hitting and sinking the Japanese trawler carrying fisheries students.
Nine of the 35 aboard are still missing, including four 17-yearold students, and all are presumed dead.
"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 on Thursday.
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 on Thursday.
The US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, said there was no evidence that the presence of civilians aboard the USS Greeneville may have contributed to the collision.