Leaked Papers Include Japan War Plans

Of 3,000 Japanese Maritime Self Defense Forces (MSDF) documents leaked on the Internet, among them was the largest-ever 2003 MSDF’s exercise plan to prepare for a military emergency on the Korean peninsula, said Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun on May 17. It is the first time that a highly classified exercise scenario has been disclosed.

The MSDF confirmed the leakage and changed all the codes and some of frequencies in consultation with the U.S. Navy, with whom Japan shares the information, said the newspaper.

Eighty warships, 170 aircrafts, and 25,000 defense personnel took part in the 10-day MSDF combat exercise in November 2003.

Among the leaked documents, three detailed the operations, dividing them into an emergency surrounding the nation, mostly on the Korean peninsula, and defense conflicts, all of which were classified under the highest confidentiality.

One document detailed the operations that will be carried out by MSDF’s Sasebo unit, which is in charge of the Kyushu region and Okinawa Prefecture with the U.S. Navy and the self defense warship.

The exercise scenarios include a nation’s crisis, effectively regarding North Korea (a crisis in neighboring country), two nations preparing a ballistic missile attack against Japan (emergency situation in Japan), and a country claiming sovereignty over its “S isles” in the southwest.

In those scenarios, the MSDF’s Sasebo unit conducts surveillance, vessel inspection, minesweeping, and evacuating of Japanese nationals in the Tsushima Strait and the Kitakyushu region from the “crisis in neighboring country” stage.

If the situation escalates into Japanese being attacked, the Self Defense Force, the main MSDF, will escort U.S. aircraft carriers and other warships to the combat zone in an effort to land ground SDF soldiers on S islets. The U.S. Navy operates surrounding the Korean peninsula and at the same time, carries out Maritime Interception Operation in the East Sea.

The document was leaked on January 21 by a Sasebo unit member in the process of using Winny, a file-sharing program, with official documents stored in his PC from 2005.

The SDF said that the leaked documents were only for training. But experts can presume a large part of emergency operations through the leaked documents, said the daily.