Japan and the United States agreed Wednesday to dispatch Japanese flight controllers to the U.S. Kadena Air Base in Okinawa Prefecture for a month of training after the Group of Eight summit in July, Japanese officials said.
The agreement made at the Japan-U.S. Joint Committee on the Status-of-Forces Agreement was in line with the earlier U.S. decision to return control of the radar system at Kadena base to Japan, they said.
The radar system at Kadena, which controls all civilian and U.S. military flights within an 80-km radius of the central Okinawa base, was designated to be operated by the U.S. military for a provisional period in the Japan-U.S. agreement, signed on the return of Okinawa to Japan in 1972.