Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said Tuesday that he did not find out about Ground Self-Defense Force activity logs from Iraq until 2½ months after they were supposed to have been discovered.
The Defense Ministry has been rocked by news of the existence of the logs, which it once claimed did not exist, raising criticisms over the ministry's management of such records. A similar incident occurred in February last year when it revealed that it found GSDF activity logs for a U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan that it earlier said had been discarded, a scandal that led then-Defense Minister Tomomi Inada to resign.
Onodera pointed that he has been telling officials at his ministry to swiftly report to him when something happens but it took 2½ this time.