Japan Navy Mobilized After Mystery Submarine Spotted

Reuters | November 10 2004

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese navy was mobilized on Wednesday for the first time in five years after an unidentified submarine was spotted in waters off Japan.

The intrusion was brief and no warning shot was fired, the government said, but the mobilization was a rare display of the country's military capability, long constrained by a pacifist constitution.

A navy P3C patrol plane spotted the submarine near the Okinawa islands, 1,600 km (1,000 miles) southwest of Tokyo, in an area close to another series of islets at the heart of a territorial dispute between Japan and China.

A second P3C plane, at least two Japanese destroyers and a helicopter were dispatched to the area, Japanese media said.

Media reports said Tokyo believed the submarine belonged to the Chinese navy, but government officials said they were still trying to confirm its nationality.

"It is regrettable. It is certainly not a good thing that an unidentified submarine entered our country's territorial waters," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters.

Media reports said that the order to the navy to mobilize -- giving it powers to fire in self-defense or forcibly change the submarine's course -- was issued more than three hours after the intruder was spotted and after it had left Japanese waters.

It is possible the submarine was having trouble, Kyodo news agency said, quoting navy officials.

Kyodo said the navy had spotted two vessels of the Chinese navy on Friday in the area near where the submarine was seen. One was designed to rescue submarines and the other to tow ships.

The last time the navy was mobilized was in 1999 when a suspected North Korean spy ship violated Japanese waters.

The Japan Coast Guard is in charge of the security of the country's coastline and waters, and the navy is ordered into action only when the government perceives a threat to lives or a security beyond the powers of the Coast Guard to handle.

Media reports said it was heading toward the Chinese coast.

Relations between China and Japan are chilly.

China, occupied by Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, is upset by Koizumi's annual visits to honor war dead at a Tokyo shrine and the two countries have a long-running dispute over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, some 200 km (124 miles) northwest of the area where the submarine was found.

The islands, known in China as the Diaoyu Islands, are controlled by Japan but also claimed by Taiwan.

Tokyo and Beijing are also at odds over a Chinese gas field project in a disputed part of the East China Sea, where Chinese research and naval ships have repeatedly entered Japan's exclusive economic waters without prior notice.

China criticized Japan's defense ministry on Tuesday over a discussion paper outlining scenarios under which Chinese forces might attack Japan, saying it revealed a lingering Cold War mentality.

Wednesday's incident comes just two weeks after Japan hosted an international maritime exercise aimed at stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Officials made it clear they were most concerned about North Korea.

Apart from China, other navies in the area with submarines include North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan and Russia.

Earlier on Wednesday, South Korea's military said it had sent three warning messages to North Korea after a North Korean patrol boat briefly crossed their disputed maritime border.

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