Japanese troops stormed a beach in the Philippines Saturday in joint exercises with U. S. and Filipino troops that officials said marked the first time Tokyo’s armoured vehicles rolled on foreign soil since World War II. The small Japanese contingent played a humanitarian support role in the drill after
Japanese troops stormed a beach in the Philippines Saturday in joint exercises with U. S. and Filipino troops that officials said marked the first time Tokyo’s armoured vehicles rolled on foreign soil since World War II.
The small Japanese contingent played a humanitarian support role in the drill after U. S. and Filipino marines made an amphibious landing to retake Philippine territory from a “terrorist” group.
Fifty unarmed Japanese soldiers in camouflage marched behind their four armoured vehicles and picked up Filipino and American troops playing the role of wounded combatants while moving inland over sand and sparse bushland.
The exercise, codenamed Kamandag (Venom), marked the first time Japanese armoured military vehicles were used on foreign soil since the country adopted a pacifist constitution after its 1945 defeat, said Japan’s Major Koki Inoue.
