Section 89 Entry 0001. Date: 2004 January 19 Monday.
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Iraq continues to dominate the news here in Japan. One reason for this is that parts of Iraq keep exploding. Another reason (and by far the larger reason) is that Japan has decided to make a military commitment to Iraq, sending elements of the Self-Defense Forces to a town in the south of Iraq with a mission to sterilize water.

By now, the Japanese military has reached Kuwait, where the troops are busy learning how to drive on sand. (Seriously. There are no deserts in Japan, and these guys have been training for their Iraq deployment in the snows of Hokkaido, the northernmost of the large Japanese islands.)

Boy, do these guys ever have squeaky clean military vehicles! Their vehicles are immaculate. They look as if they've just driven off the pages of a catalog of military dream toys. These guys would win all the prizes for cleaning things.

And how well is the Japanese military going to do in Iraq? Apart from succeeding in keeping their vehicles clean, that is?

Well, it's early days yet. They haven't even got there yet. However, even so, let me give my opinion. I'm confident that these guys are properly trained and equipped for the stated mission, the mission being to sterilize water for the benefit of a thirsty civilian population.

We've seen them on TV, time and time again, working outside in the snow, sterilizing water zealously, the water pouring out of hoses, nice and clean, so clean that (on a TV scene I've viewed at least a dozen times) a guy in uniform cups his hands, captures water straight from the hose, and drinks it.

These guys can sterilize water, then. But what if they get involved in some kind of military encounter in the Land Where All Major Combat Operations Have Ended?

I recently saw, on Japanese TV, on an NHK news program, some documentary scenes of some Japanese troops training for their Iraq deployment. The exercise that was shown on TV seemed to be about how to react to incoming mortar fire. (That's my interpretation, but I couldn't follow the Japanese language commentary, so I'm not sure.)

This is what I saw:-

A bunch of guys in uniform were moving through a lightly wooded area. Although they were making some effort to spread out, some of them were bunched quite close together, within touching distance of their neighbors. There would have been a dozen of them within a radius of ten meters (thirty feet.)

From time to time, someone would scream a word which sounded, to my ear, like "Bomb!" And then there would be an explosion (a real explosion, somewhere) and the guys in training would kind of stoop towards the dirt.

But I didn't see anyone actually hit the dirt. I didn't see anyone hit the ground like a hammer, as if his life depended on it. And, while some of these trainees did end up on the ground, most ended up in an ambivalent stooped position, making, at best, a token gesture toward self-preservation.

Watching these guys move through the tree line, the word that came to mind was "stumbling."

The other thing I noticed on TV, just yesterday, was a bunch Japanese military types saluting at some kind of meeting in Kuwait. I got the impression that perhaps the salutes were supposed to be synchronized. But they weren't.