Were Japan’s missile defence plans made for China instead of North Korea?

Warming ties between Pyongyang and the rest of the region are unlikely to stop Tokyo’s hawkish government from deploying Aegis missile systems, since the perceived threat from Beijing may have been the real reason for them

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A Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) is launched from the Japanese Aegis Destroyer JS Kongo in the water off Kauai, Hawaii. Photo: AP/Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force

Published: 3:45pm, 26 Jun 2018Updated: 9:06pm, 26 Jun 2018

Encouraged by the pace of peace moves on the Korean Peninsula, local governments and residents of districts in Japan that have been earmarked as potential sites for the Aegis Ashore missile defence system are now asking whether the weapons need to be deployed.

Similarly, Governor Takeshi Onaga, the fierce opponent of the large US military presence in Okinawa, has declared that the reduction in tensions between the two Koreas means it is time to send the troops in his prefecture home.

Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga speaking at the 73rd anniversary of the end of the second world war. Photo: Kyodo

Onaga used the anniversary on Saturday of the end of fighting on the islands in the closing days of the second world war to step up his conflict with the central government over what many people in the prefecture consider to be an oppressive US military presence.

“Developments towards detente have begun,” the governor said in this year’s annual peace declaration marking the end of fighting in the prefecture. He said continuing to build new facilities at the US Marine Corps’ Camp Schwab in the northeast of the prefecture – including two runways on reclaimed land – “goes against the present trend”.

The governors of two other prefectures – Yamaguchi, in southwest Japan, and Akita, in the far north of the country – expressed similar sentiments to Itsunori Onodera, the defence minister.