YONAGUNI, Japan, Dec 5 (Portal) – Sonkichi Sakihara recalls how he chanced upon some of the last refugees to arrive on Yonaguni: four men who had traveled more than 2,000 kilometers from Vietnam to reach Japan’s westernmost inhabited island to reach. It was 1977.
“I was on my way to look for stowaways from Taiwan when I found them,” said Sakihara, 80, at his family shop near the port, where he met the group of 113 Vietnamese set to make the journey after the war ended .
Some Yonaguni residents today are anticipating another refugee crisis, which they say their isolated outpost and its shrinking population of fewer than 1,700 are ill-equipped to handle. Just 110 kilometers west and occasionally visible from Yonaguni lies Taiwan, the self-governing island of 24 million people that China claims as its territory and which Beijing is threatening with simulated missile attacks and other displays of military firepower.
Concerned about the potential for conflict, Japan has embarked on its biggest defense buildup since World War II. But the $290 billion spending comes without a parallel plan to prepare Yonaguni for a potential humanitarian crisis that residents like Sakihara say could quickly overwhelm its shores.
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In interviews with Portal, more than two dozen current and former Japanese officials and residents said hundreds if not thousands of refugees could try to reach Yonaguni in boats if China attacks Taiwan. They said Tokyo had no plans to deal with them and locals’ pleas for help went unanswered.
“It’s like their mouths are taped shut,” said Yonaguni Mayor Kenichi Itokazu, referring to the central government. On a bulletin board in his town hall was a list of typhoons and other crises that had struck the island, including the arrival of the Vietnamese.
Itokazu said he asked Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno directly for help during his visit to Yonaguni in July, but again received no response.
Some US officials say China may be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Chinese leader Xi Jinping told U.S. President Joe Biden last month that there was no such plan, but he was increasing pressure on Taiwan ahead of the Jan. 13 presidential election that Vice President Lai Ching-te, which Beijing calls a separatist considered, is expected to win.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry declined to answer questions about whether it had discussed humanitarian emergencies with Japan, but said Taipei would not act hastily or give in to Chinese coercion.
A spokesman for Japan’s Cabinet Secretariat said: “If a large number of refugees came to Japan, relevant government departments would work together to respond.”
He declined to comment on whether there was a concrete plan for Yonaguni, saying he did not know whether the island’s mayor had directly asked for help from Matsuno.
CRISIS SCENARIO
Those who spoke to Portal included nine current and six former officials with knowledge of Japan’s emergency planning, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
They said that while Taiwanese refugees could flee to Japan by sea, the nature of any conflict and the number of refugees would be difficult to predict. The Japanese government has not publicly mentioned such a scenario.
“There could be hundreds of boats, even too many for a Chinese blockade to stop,” a Japanese coast guard official said. The Cabinet Secretariat, led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Matsuno, is responsible for developing a plan, he added.
The current and former officials described a government focused on its military buildup rather than a complex humanitarian response plan that involved numerous departments, local authorities and companies that might have to screen, transport, feed and house more refugees than Japan ever had has experienced .
According to the Migration Policy Institute, there were around 18,000 refugees in Japan in 2022, most of them from Myanmar. The institute cited figures from the United Nations, which use a broader definition than the Japanese government. Amid conflict in Europe and the Middle East, Germany had more than two million and Poland had nearly a million, many of them from Ukraine.
Tokyo needs to make a political decision about whether to accept significant numbers of refugees, said Kevin Maher of NMV Consulting in Washington, who was previously head of Japan affairs at the State Department.
“Japan has been hesitant to let large numbers in, but whatever the policy, the reality is that almost anything that floats could be headed to Japan,” Maher said.
A BIG JOB
Gen. Yoshihide Yoshida, the head of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF), said he witnessed the refugee crisis caused by Russia’s attack on Ukraine when he visited Poland last year.
“If something similar were to happen near us, we would have to offer the same kind of humanitarian assistance, but that should not be left to the SDF, it is up to the entire government to look into this thoroughly,” he said of Tokunoshima at the eastern end of the Island chain that includes Yonaguni, where he observed landing exercises by Japanese forces on the beach on November 19th.
On that day, Taiwan detected Chinese aircraft over the Taiwan Strait and spotted warships conducting combat readiness patrols.
The roughly 200 SDF troops on Yonaguni could be among the first to respond to a refugee crisis if, as Kishida warned last year, East Asia becomes the next Ukraine.
But in the more than 100 pages of documents describing Kishida’s military buildup, refugees are mentioned only once, in a general reference to cooperation with the United Nations
Tokyo will be reluctant to implement specific humanitarian plans on Yonaguni because it could lead China to believe Japan is preparing for a Taiwan conflict, a U.S. official with knowledge of Japanese thinking said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was was not authorized to comment publicly.
Even if he had a refugee plan, Kishida would still face an obstacle: his contentious relationship with the Okinawa government, which administers Yonaguni.
Gov. Denny Tamaki wants fewer U.S. troops stationed in his prefecture, opposes Kishida’s military expansion and says it is the prime minister’s job to manage migrants arriving by boat.
“Even if it is left to the municipalities, the powers and financial resources for this are not yet clearly defined,” he said in an interview. There is still resentment in Okinawa over the death of a fourth islander in World War II and the heavy military presence there.
In March, officials from Okinawa and Tokyo conducted their first tabletop exercise to simulate the evacuation of around 120,000 residents and tourists on Japan’s southwestern islands, including Yonaguni. The operation would take about a week.
“There is no guarantee that no people will come from Taiwan, and that would overwhelm the system,” said one of the exercise’s advisers, Hironobu Nakabayashi of Kokushikan University’s Disaster Management and Emergency Medicine Research Institute.
NOT ENOUGH TO SHARE
Back in Yonaguni, 33-year-old resident Satoshi Nagahama was surprised to learn that the government had no humanitarian plan for refugees.
“I don’t think we can handle it. The government would have to take them somewhere else,” he said from the island’s closest port to Taiwan, where he was towing blue marlin from fishing boats and packing them in ice.
Even the community center where the Vietnamese refugees Sakihara found were temporarily housed has been closed for a decade, its crumbling concrete walls covered in green netting.
Without the government’s help, some residents say it would be the job of the island’s two police officers or city hall officials, including Koji Sugama, a 65-year-old former soldier, to deal with a refugee crisis.
Since he was hired in April to improve disaster management, one of Sugama’s tasks has been to procure emergency supplies for residents, including bottled water and prepared meals packed in three heavy steel containers distributed across the island.
“That’s enough for a day, maybe two,” he said, standing in one of them. “There isn’t enough to share.”
Reporting by Tim Kelly, Kaori Kaneko and Yukiko Toyoda; additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei and Kentaro Sugiyama in Tokyo; Editing by David Crawshaw
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