Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera on Tuesday denied that newly disclosed activity logs of a past Self-Defense Forces mission in Iraq contradicted the government's assertion that the troops were sent to "noncombat" areas.
The word "combat" showed up multiple times in the nearly 15,000 pages of activity logs released Monday detailing missions by Ground Self-Defense Force troops to support international reconstruction efforts in the war-torn country between 2004 and 2006.
Under the postwar Constitution that restricts the use of force overseas, the government enacted a special law in 2003 that only allows the SDF to be dispatched for humanitarian and reconstruction operations in "noncombat" areas.