Testimony from former commanders of Japan’s maritime, air, and ground forces reveals the realities behind the legislation on self-defense and collective self-defense passed seventy years after the war. The article exposes China’s historical falsification, aggressive actions in the South and East China Seas, and the grave consequences of international complacency.

2016-02-05

The realities of national defense as described by three former commanders of the maritime, air, and ground forces vividly revealed the circumstances under which the legislation on self-defense and collective self-defense—rights possessed by every nation in the world—was finally passed by the Japanese Diet seventy years after the war.

It made unmistakably clear the conditions on the ground that necessitated this decision.

At last, the one-party dictatorship of the Communist Party went beyond the outrageous act of calmly falsifying historical truth in order to realize its fundamental ambitions.

In the South China Sea, for the sake of those ambitions, it destroyed vast numbers of coral reefs, reclaimed countless reefs, and attempted to turn the South China Sea into its own territorial waters, brazenly ignoring international law and all established norms, insisting only that its own ambitions be fulfilled.

This was nothing less than an exploitation of what I have repeatedly described as Obama’s great failure.

Considering how profoundly his statements—made without even recognizing America’s original sins—have adversely affected world peace and stability, the Nobel Committee that awarded him the Peace Prize was clearly mistaken, or rather, acted prematurely.

It was an error of the same nature as the decision to award the Nobel Prize in Literature to Kenzaburō Ōe.

If one were to give a literary prize, my firm conviction is that it should have been awarded to Murasaki Shikibu and Ishiyama-dera instead—though I will write about that another time.

In the East China Sea, China has not only declared the Senkaku Islands to be its own territory and begun daily incursions by sea and air to probe Japan’s vulnerabilities, but has gone so far as to assert, through the People’s Daily, ambitions that even Okinawa should be Chinese territory.

Precisely in response to this situation, Governor Onaga emerged in Okinawa.

To be continued.