Japanese sub arrives in Philippines on training exercise

MANILA -- A Japanese submarine docked in the Philippines for the first time in 15 years on Sunday, a move calculated to display Japan's increasingly close armed forces cooperation with the Southeast Asian country in the face of an assertive China.

     "It's meant to send a message to the relevant countries that we're keeping a close eye on the South China Sea," a senior Defense Ministry official said, explaining that Japan was acting in concert with the U.S. Navy.

     The training sub Oyashio arrived in Subic Bay along with the destroyers Ariake and Setogiri, which subsequently sailed for Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, where they will become the first such Japanese vessels to dock.

     Cam Ranh Bay lies near the Spratly Islands, a contested area of the South China Sea where China is building artificial islands with installations that could serve military purposes.

     The two destroyers left Japan's Etajima, near Hiroshima, on March 19 and joined up with the submarine along the way for training exercises geared for junior sailors, including the use of anti-submarine helicopters.

     Subic Bay is located only about 200km from the Scarborough Shoal, claimed by the Philippines but under the effective control of China, which calls it Huangyan Island. The U.S. maintained a naval base on the bay until 1992.

     This extension of the South China Sea has regained importance as maritime tensions between the U.S., China and its neighbors have risen. American supply ships have taken to stopping at the bay.

     Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces' Capt. Hiroaki Yoshino, the submarine commander for the exercise, told reporters in the Philippines that the need for anti-submarine training has grown as neighboring countries' submarine activities have increased.

     Japan has no plans to expand Self-Defense Forces routine surveillance to the South China Sea anytime soon. "There are limits to what we can do," Adm. Katsutoshi Kawano, chief of staff of the SDF's Joint Staff, has said. For now, Japan will provide indirect support to Southeast Asian nations in cooperation with the U.S. Japanese Maritime SDF vessels will make an effort to stop at Philippine and Vietnamese ports on their way to and from the waters off Somalia, where they are engaged in counter-piracy operations.

     Defense Minister Gen Nakatani is considering a trip to the Philippines in late April or early May to discuss a loan of Japanese Maritime SDF TC-90 training aircraft for use in South China Sea patrols.