Posted on 12/24/2009 11:33:59 PM PST by GATOR NAVY
TOKYO — Two homemade mortar launchers found within possible striking distance of Naval Air Facility Atsugi on Wednesday are being investigated as a planned guerrilla attack, Japanese police said.
The time-triggered devices contained projectiles and were found at 10:20 a.m. in a wooded area about 500 yards north of the main base gate in Ayase City by a Japanese neighbor, a Kanagawa Prefectural Police spokesman said Wednesday.
No projectiles had been launched from the devices, the spokesman said.
Further details on the launchers and whether the projectiles were explosive were unavailable Wednesday, according to the spokesman.
Police suspect an attack was planned by an extreme leftist group, the spokesman said.
Base officials will provide any requested support, but Kanagawa police are in charge of the investigation, said Atsugi base spokesman Tim McGough.
In the meantime, the base has raised its security level and is informing residents about the incident, McGough said.
“We’re making sure residents stay aware of anything suspicious and report it as soon as they see it,” McGough said.
The incident is the second such publicly announced device found near a mainland Japan military base in the past two months.
At Yokota Air Base, about an hour north of Tokyo and two hours north of Atsugi, police found two 4-foot-long metal pipes with wires attached in November. Police found no signs of use at the time.
In September 2008, a mortar blasted a hole into the balcony of an off-base home near Yokosuka Naval Base, south of Tokyo.
A group referring to itself in Japanese as “revolutionary army” claimed responsibility for the attack and called it a protest of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington’s arrival in Japan.
I TDY’d quite a lot at Atsugi back in the day. VR-21 (the squadron) actually kept a detatchment there. Morter fire wasn’t a concern.
Similar incident also occurred at Yokota AB in the 90’s. One mortar blew up in the tube the other one made it inside the base but failed to go off.More peace and tolerance from our lefty friends.
Very , very small minority .
We have a POS leftist in the White House and it has emboldened these little POS radicals in Japan. COntrary to what is happening here in the USA with resident terrorists training, in Japan these little dip sh*ts will be hunted down.
And we may not even hear what happens to them.
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Not the first, won’t be the last.
When I was stationed at Yokota AB in 1986 two rockets were launched at the base. They were aiming at what the bad guys thought were the weapons bunkers. They missed, but came much too close to several of the apartment towers on base.
Shortly after the rocket incident, somebody tried to ram a car through one of the gates.
After that incident, there were large numbers of Japanese riot police stationed at the gates for several months. No more attacks after the police turned out.
I was stationed at Camp Fuchinobe 1965-69. We lived in Minami-Rinkan, midway between NAS Atsugi and Camp Zama. It was pretty peaceful then. Most issues arose from brawling GIs up in the Tokyo area on R&R from Vietnam. Both bases were pretty open.
Heh...
The Chukakuha and the Japanese Red Army consists of a few doddering old early 60s relics — most of whom couldn’t carry anything heavier than a bottle of sake, but who still consider themselves to be the vanguard of the “People’s Revolution” in Japan.
I was drinking with a cop some years ago and wondered out loud why they don’t just roll them up. It’s obvious they know all the players.
He just laughed and asked me what they would do with all the riot cops if they did.
As annoying as it may be to the true revolutionaries in Japan, all they are doing with crap like this is providing job security for thousands of police officers.
FEN would come on and warn Americans and dependents of “troubles” off base. Condition orange, then condition red meant stay on base or inside when the riots happened on May Day.
Back in the day, FEN was about our only source of entertainment and news.
You are talking about FEN radio, right? We had TV when I was at Sasebo and then Atsugi from 1990-2004 but even at that time all we had was AFRTS/FEN most of that period. Sasebo got on base cable with commercial stateside channels in the late ‘90s, Atsugi in 2002 or ‘03, don’t remember exactly when now. I still listened to AFN in the car. Japanese radio sucked, too much talking, not enough music.
remember when homeported in Yokosuka in early 60’s the ‘other faction’ decided to riot in front of the main gate. After several attempts to break them up etc the USN ‘powers that be’ threatened to make Yokosuka OFF LIMITS.
Needless to say the 99% of the population that depended on the “White Hats” to survive worked out a compromise and as I remember, the ‘protestors’ were given one gate, guarded by local police and never really bothered us coming or going.
MONEY RULES.....
Right. It was Far East Network radio. There were a couple of local military DJs, and they played contemporary music and had some syndicated shows from Hollywood. There was no FEN TV at the time. One of the DJs was an Airman First Class, first name “Burr.” I’ve been trying to remember his last name and it’s been driving me crazy.
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