Michael Stanley visits U.S. and Japanese trenches to ask how the troops feel about their roles and each other

Rape, mayhem and the fury of the Okinawans be damned. The U.S. military presence in Japan is regarded so highly by the two governments in terms of regional security that without some radical political upheaval, it is safe to say that no major revisions will be made. But this hasn't stopped the issue from embroiling almost every U.S.-Japan expert on either side of the Pacific. Is Japan still under Occupation? Is America coddling an over-dependent partner? Is the U.S. running a mercenary operation, since stationing its forces here is cheaper than keeping them at home? That the questions are finally being asked--in the open--is healthy and hopefully revealing.

On the nuts-and-bolts level of the military forces themselves, however, other questions are worth asking: How do the two sides see themselves and each other? Can they really function together to defend the Japanese archipelago? Do they trust each other?

Between 1985 and 1995, I photographed and wrote about the U.S.-Japan defense relationship. Through a lucky combination of circumstances, I was able to avoid the standard sanitized press briefings and observe the day-to-day relations between the two forces. It was enlightening for me to live for a while on or close to both U.S. and Japanese bases. On a Japan Air Self Defense Forces (JASDF) base I was able to eat, relax and even fly with the airmen during training.

"We know what we can do, and you have seen it this week," a JASDF colonel insisted over a beer at the end of a day's joint air-defense exercise. I had, and had been impressed. Good fighter pilots have to be extremely brash individualists who can also work well as a team, and the better Japanese pilots, I had come to believe, were some of the best. "Tactically, we have really nothing to learn from America," continued the colonel. "But strategically, we have everything."

Two nights later, I shared dinner with an American lieutenant colonel who was participating in the same drill. As we hiked back to our lodgings I mentioned what the SDF colonel had told me.

"Someone in his position might see it like that," the American answered. "But there are an awful lot of things about modern warfare that these Self-Defense Forces don't have the faintest notion of, and part of our job here might just be to keep it that way. There's more at stake here than just Japan."

All of the Japan-based U.S. military personnel I spoke with were unanimous in pointing out the "group-think" orientation that pervades almost every aspect of the Self-Defense Forces. How disastrous to the nation might this prove if the SDF was actually called upon to repulse an attack? One need only look at the official responses to domestic disasters such as last year's Kobe earthquake, or the 1985 JAL disaster in which the SDF took hours to reach the wreckage (after U.S. airmen had pinpointed the crash site) to see why the question needs to be asked.

"If a situation hasn't been covered either in a textbook or a training exercise, they have a hard time dealing with it," says former Air Force Captain William Webb, once attached to the public affairs staff for United States Forces Japan and Fifth Air Force. "Their decisions in the JAL crash were unconscionable. It seems they still haven't learned that war--and that's what defense comes down to--isn't formulaic. Eight-thousand degrees in downtown Hiroshima definitely wasn't in their forecast that day in August."

Other U.S. personnel were even more blunt. During a trip to Camp Gonsalves, in Okinawa's wild Northern Training Area, I spoke with a first lieutenant of the Marines who had recently returned from the battlefield. His job was to run non-combat Marines through a combat skills course--navigating jungles, crossing rivers and rappelling down cliffs. Shortly before I met him, he had led a unit of Japanese Rangers from the Ground Self-Defense Forces through his training course. "I wouldn't bet on those guys defending a phone booth," he scoffed. "The only word that comes to mind is `clusterfuck.' Until they learn that you can't have a team without individuals to make up that team, they'd better stay at home, where it's safe."

This is not to say that there are no examples of heroism on the part of Japanese military men. In the predawn darkness of January 23, 1992, a flight of U.S. Air Force F-16 fighters departed Misawa Air Base in Aomori Prefecture for a training deployment to Hawaii. Just after 5:30am, something went terribly wrong: the wingtip of an aerial refueling tanker sheared the nose off Captain John Dolan's fighter. As his airplane tumbled out of control, Dolan ejected. Soon he was bobbing in the cold Pacific, 1000 kilometers east of Tokyo.

Since the U.S. Forces in Japan have no aircraft capable of a rescue so far out at sea, the Americans requested that a flying boat of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces be scrambled from its base at Atsugi. The flight time to Dolan's location--at the far edge of the flying boat's range--was almost three hours. There would be little time to loiter and search. The plane was dispatched without delay.

When the pilot, Lieutenant Commander Hideki Kida, homed in on Dolan, he found that the wave height, according to on-board radar, was four meters. Aware that JMSDF rules dictated that water landings were not to be made on waves of over two meters, Kida made three passes, hoping for a patch of less energetic ocean to appear. But fuel was becoming critical. Kida commanded the crew to prepare for a rough-water landing--an order that provoked a shouting match on the flight deck. The pilot prevailed and set the ungainly aircraft down, slightly damaging it in the process. The rescue divers sprang into action and just over 20 minutes later, a near-hypothermic Dolan was en route to the hospital at Yokota Air Base.

In September 1992, Kida and his crew of 11 were awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal by a grateful U.S. Air Force. And how did the Japanese defense bureaucracy see this example of individual initiative and heroism? Despite support from his comrades, Lieutenant Commander Kida was reassigned to a desk job in a Shizuoka recruiting office. It was made to look like a promotion.

The public did not have a chance to decide for themselves what they thought of Kida's actions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the only places I saw the story appear in the Japanese press were in an aviation hobby magazine and the in-house journal of the flying boat's manufacturer. To some of the career officers who see negative incidents receive huge media coverage, this is the crux of the problem, something that hinders them from finding their identity--whether as a group or as professional military individuals.

"The press has no idea what the Self Defense Forces is," said the JASDF colonel, sipping his beer. "their image of defense is close to caricature. I have no patience with them. I can say simply that the main problem with Japan's defense establishment is one of perspective: we have no long view. That is this country's weakness."