No mention of war as US, Japanese troops work together

Hiroshima Letter:The sight of American and Japanese soldiers on the same military facility in Hiroshima can be a surprise. This is, after all, just miles from where the butchery of the Pacific war ended in a nuclear holocaust unleashed from a US bomber that killed 100,000 people.

The troops have shared the Iwakuni marine base for decades as part of a half-century alliance that shelters Japan underneath the world's largest military umbrella.

Behind these fences, the two sides salute each other, co-operate in military exercises and swap tactics.

But while US troops get to fire live weapons and drop bombs around the world, Japanese troops must stay at home, tied by constitutional restrictions - ironically, written by the Americans - that forbid military engagement.

Those restrictions are a hindrance - to both sides. Iwakuni is the closet military airfield in Japan to the Korean demilitarised zone, and the US wants all the help it can get.

"If anything happens, we will be in the hotspot," says master sergeant Lesli Coakley of the base's public affairs office.

Japan's hog-tied army has given it the reputation of a military minnow, but under US tutelage the country has built up a formidable war machine. In addition to hosting more than 40,000 American soldiers in bases like Iwakuni, the world's second-largest economy boasts a self-defence force army of 238,000 who are among the best-equipped troops on the planet.

The 45,000 air self-defence force personnel fly a fleet of about 200 F-15 fighters. Japan is one of only three countries, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, allowed to buy them from the US. The country also has 32 F-2 fighters and four Aegis-equipped destroyers, carrying a price tag of 120 billion yen (€757 million) each.

This, in other words, is an army dressed up with nowhere to go.

The military hardware includes oddities such as a $500 million (€378 million) fleet of 10 helicopters dedicated to sweeping for mines, despite the fact that nobody has planted a mine in a Japanese harbour in over half a century, nor is anyone likely to.

"They're just in case something happens," said a Japanese pilot.

And while the half-century taboo on going to war has kept Japan from building bombs, it does make ships, submarines, planes and large sections of the thousands of commercial airliners that fly around the world.

As a major nuclear power, all that is standing in the way of an A-bomb is the lack of political will and the opposition of the country's anti-nuclear lobby.

Much discussion about the potential of Japan's military is tinged with racism: one commentator likened allowing Japan to rearm to putting an alcoholic in charge of a bar, as though the instinct for war is embedded in the country's DNA.

But there is no disguising the fact that as Tokyo moves closer to its American military partner and prepares to shed its constitutional ties, the prospect of a remilitarised Japan fills many neighbouring countries with trepidation.

Tokyo has simply not persuaded the rest of Asia that it has truly come to terms with the past. The country's uneasiness with history is on display in a nearby museum, dedicated to the Yamato, the biggest battleship of the second World War.

The museum is filled with passive expressions like "extension of the battle lines" as though the war, like bad weather, simply arrived instead of being fuelled by disastrous political decisions.

Inside Iwakuni, such things don't matter and the young soldiers on both sides have long ago ceased caring about what went on six decades ago. Self-defence force troops walk past portraits of American presidents, and US pilots wear insignias that mix the once-hated symbol of the Japanese Imperial Army the rising sun - with stars and stripes.

"The war was a long time ago," says Sgt Coakley. The troops are gearing up for a massive base expansion that will see the number of US aircraft and personnel double and the construction of a $2.5 billion (€1.9 billion) offshore runway, paid for by the Japanese taxpayer.

Outside, however, some are reluctant to let go of the past so easily. "There are people who see joint military co-operation as a sign of progress, but not me," says Ayako Nishimura, who campaigns for the closure of all US bases in Japan. "We are going backwards, not forwards."

Nishimura has been heartened by a local referendum last year on the expansion, in which 89 per cent of local voters opposed it. But most military commanders around this city, rebuilt from the ruins of a war that happened long ago, believe this is a temporary pothole on the road to a brave new future where American and Japanese troops will finally fight on the same side.

"I want to be able to contribute to international society," says Japanese chief petty officer Osamu Taguchi. "That's why I joined the SDF."