Camp Zama to house joint US-Japan counter-terrorism center
Ooh, we like the sound of this:
The Japanese and US governments have begun to coordinate efforts to establish the command center for a “Central Rapid Response Team,” a division of the Ground Self-Defense Forces to be newly established in 2006 for the purposes of responding to domestic terrorism and contributing to international missions, on the grounds of the US military base Camp Zama (Kanagawa Prefecture). The plan is to rotate the US Army’s First Corps command center from US soil to Camp Zama as part of the restructuring of US military deployments. Japan-US military integration looks poised to progress one more step due to the move, in which command functions brought together at Zama will be used to for the counter-terrorism measures of both countries both domestically and in contributing to international efforts.
I’ll be interested to see what more we learn about this. Last year, there was the news that the Japanese federal government was asking Israel for help with its domestic counter-terrorism measures. I haven’t seen anything about it since then.