The government has announced that the U.S. Marine Corps will train with Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft in Shiga and Kochi prefectures in October. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that the training will help reduce the burden on Okinawa Prefecture. Twenty-three Osprey aircraft are stationed at the U.S. Marine Corps' Air Station Futenma in the central part of Okinawa Island. Mr. Suga's rhetoric is hard to understand since the Osprey will continue to be stationed at Futenma.
The Okinawa prefectural assembly and the 41 municipal assemblies in the prefecture have passed resolutions calling for the removal of the Osprey from Futenma, expressing fears about its safety and the increased burden on Okinawa. The planned training will result in spreading worries about the Osprey from Okinawa to other parts of Japan.
In Shiga Prefecture, the Ground Self-Defense Force and the U.S. Marine Corps will carry out joint training in mid-October in the GSDF's Aibano maneuvering grounds on the assumption that a war situation has developed. In Kochi Prefecture, training will be carried out in late October for Japan-U.S. cooperation to cope with a massive earthquake in the Nankai trough. From a Maritime Self-Defense Force ship off the prefecture, the Osprey will simulate searching for disaster victims and transporting patients to the Marine Corps' Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Ospreys have already flown over the northern part of Kochi Prefecture for training. Neither Shiga nor Kochi Prefecture has been given detailed information about the training.