The damaged chopper is seen on the deck of a U.S. Navy ship on Wednesday. NHK
Japan Economic Newswire | Aug 14, 2015
The U.S. military helicopter that crashed while landing on a U.S. Navy ship off Japan's southern island of Okinawa on Wednesday may have hit a crane or other objects aboard the vessel before going down, Japanese government sources said Thursday.
As the U.S. forces in Japan continued investigating the cause of the crash, which they now say injured seven crew members rather than six as previously stated, local Japanese officials sought more information on the accident to address concerns of people living near U.S. bases in Okinawa.
A rally to protest against the heavy presence of U.S. military facilities in Okinawa was held at Okinawa International University, where a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter crashed 11 years ago Thursday and injured three crew members, but no students or other civilians on campus.
According to Japanese government sources, Wednesday's crash involving a U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk occurred when the Army special operation forces were conducting a drill to retake a ship commandeered by an armed group. The helicopter was flying at a low altitude and is likely to have hit a crane or other objects on the ship's deck when trying to land.
Seventeen crew members were aboard the helicopter. Two of the seven injured were members of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force specializing in responding to terrorism and guerilla attacks, the sources said.
In a statement, U.S. Forces, Japan said the exercise was conducted "as part of a demonstration of the range" of U.S. special operation forces' capabilities to members of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces.
Rarely does cooperation in special operations between the United States and the SDF become public, even partially.
In Washington, U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said Wednesday he is "not going to overreact to one incident," emphasizing the need for allies to work together.
"There are risks in the work that we do every single day, and ... we obviously want to prevent any of these risks, but sometimes, unfortunately, we have accidents," he told reporters.
Asked about any possible impact on the Japan-U.S. security relationship, Odierno declined to comment, saying, "I'm not going to predict what the issue will be within Japanese politics."
On Thursday in Naha, the capital of Okinawa, the prefectural government asked the central government to urge the U.S. military to investigate the crash and disclose information.
In a letter submitted to the Defense Ministry's Okinawa Defense Bureau, the Okinawa government said the accident will cause "great concern to prefectural residents who have been forced to live alongside U.S. bases."
Speaking to reporters, Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga stressed the need to revise a Japan-U.S. status of forces agreement given that the Japanese government is not receiving sufficient information about the latest incident from the U.S. military.
The agreement does not obligate the United States to report to Japan about accidents involving U.S. forces in the country.
"The Japanese side cannot intervene at all," Onaga said. "We must strongly insist on revising the agreement to ensure the safety of the people in the prefecture."
The accident came at a sensitive time as the central government has just started talks with Okinawa to break an impasse over a controversial plan to relocate the U.S. Marines' Air Station Futenma from a densely populated area in Ginowan to the less populated Henoko district of Nago, both within the prefecture.
Onaga, who became governor in December on an anti-base relocation platform, has demanded the Futenma base be moved outside the island prefecture. But the central government has been pushing the existing plan to remove the danger of keeping the air station at the center of a crowded residential area in Ginowan.
Ginowan Mayor Atsushi Sakima told a press conference on Thursday that he wants the Futenma base site returned to Japan "as soon as possible," saying there could be "irreversible" damage if an accident occurs near the air base.
"The helicopter crash cannot help but remind me of (the accident at Okinawa International University in Ginowan) 11 years ago," Sakima said. "I have renewed my sense of risks" posed by the base, he said.
After a Marine helicopter went down on university premises, Japanese police had difficulty investigating the case as the status of forces agreement requires that Japan obtain U.S. consent for investigations on U.S. military property.
There have been a number of other crashes in Okinawa involving U.S. military helicopters and fighter aircraft, including a U.S. Air Force helicopter crash in August 2013 at the U.S. Marine Corps' Camp Hansen that killed one crew member.
In the latest case, the helicopter crash-landed on the 62,000-ton U.S. Navy ship Red Cloud around 1:46 p.m. Wednesday in the Pacific Oceansome 14 kilometers southeast of Ikei Island, part of the city of Uruma, according to the Japan Coast Guard.
U.S. Forces, Japan had earlier said six people were injured, but it revised the number to seven on Thursday.