Despite Tensions, U.S. and Japan Begin a New Set of War Games

HONG KONG - As Chinese surveillance ships continued their patrols near a disputed archipelago, and with the Chinese Communist Party preparing to open a landmark meeting in Beijing on Thursday, the United States and Japan went ahead with a large military exercise in the region.

The 11-day exercise, dubbed Keen Sword, which began Monday, involves 34,100 troops from the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and more than 10,000 American land, air and naval forces.

Keen Sword was originally planned to include an operation Monday that simulated the re-taking of an island from an enemy force, according to the Kyodo news agency in Japan.

“While the Japanese and U.S. government did not say the drill took into account any specific location,” Kyodo reported, “it was widely perceived they had in mind the Senkaku Islands.”

The Senkakus, controlled by Japan, are also claimed by China and Taiwan, and the small islets in the East China Sea have been the focus of fr aying regional tensions in recent months, including anti-Japanese riots in China. The Chinese called the islands the Diaoyus; the Taiwanese call them the Tiaoyutai.

But the re-taking operation, planned for an uninhabited island off Okinawa called Irisunajima, has now been shelved, according to Japanese government sources cited by Kyodo, with “the hope of the prime minister's office and the U.S. side of not aggravating ties with China.”

Maneuvers in the Keen Sword exercise are planned for various locations around Japan - the specific locations were not disclosed - but they were not expected to venture near the disputed islands.

A Chinese military spokesman, Yang Yujun, said at a briefing, “We sternly oppose Japan wooing extraterritorial nations for joint military drills that only increase regional tensions.”

Chinese maritime surveillance ships have been patrolling near the Senkaku/Diaoyu chain for more than two weeks now, as my colleague Martin Fackler recently reported from Japan.

“While Chinese ships have sailed near the islands before, this is the first time since a recent flare-up began that they have plied the waters so consistently,” Martin wrote.

“Analysts say that suggests China is trying to wear down Japan's resolve in the dispute, and possibly even trying to chip away at Japan's claim of having effective control over the uninhabited islands established in part by its own maritime patrols.”

Ships from the Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese navies have so far refrained from navigating close to the islands. As Martin reported:

By deploying paramilitary ships, analysts said, both nations were being careful not to call in their navies, in order to avoid a dangerous escalation. Still, Japanese Coast Guard ships and many of China's surveillance ships are armed, leading to concerns that a miscalculation or human error by a single sailor could touch off a violent confront ation.

Beijing also continued to build diplomatic pressure over the island dispute. Liu Xiaoming, the ambassador to Britain, in a commentary in The Financial Times, said, “The friction has been caused solely by Japan. China has made clear its position and expressed concerns to Japan on many levels, but Japan is intransigent.”

Mr. Liu reiterated the bitterness felt by China and other countries in the region over Japan's brutal conduct during World War II:

Many historians have compared postwar Japan and Germany. Their conclusions are consistent: Unlike Germany, Japan has never seriously reflected on its behavior during the second world war. War criminals are still worshiped at the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo. Senior Japanese officials often pay tribute there. Japan's leaders have occasionally offered grudging apologies but these have never convinced its neighbors.

Keen Sword - especially with its size, scope and t iming - might appear to be something of a provocation. But military officials and diplomats stress that it is a regularly scheduled operation, one of countless military drills that the United States holds with other Asia-Pacific nations, sometimes bilaterally, sometimes with a group of nations. Keen Sword was last held in 2010.

Indeed, China and the United States plan to hold “a joint drill on humanitarian rescue and disaster relief” later this month in Sichuan Province, the state-run newspaper China Daily reported. Military medics will participate, the paper said, and Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus will make a visit.

A 15-day exercise with Japan called Orient Shield, for example, is now under way, with troops from both countries operating in live-fire drills. It marks the first time that U.S. Army forces have used Stryker armored vehicles in Japan, which “shows our increased commitment to a Pacific partner,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Larsen, quoted in a re cent article by the newspaper Stars & Stripes.

Dispelling the “arrogant American stereotype” is another goal of the exercise, according to Major Randall Baucom, a U.S. Army Japan spokesman.

“We aren't Rambo. We aren't ‘Hurt Locker,' ” he said. “We're soldiers just like they are, trying to protect our country and our buddies and ourselves.”

Meanwhile, thousands of people protested in Tokyo on Sunday over the U.S. military's deployment of Osprey hybrid aircraft in Japan. The Associated Press reported that the crowd chanted, “Ospreys out! Marine Corps out!”

And last week, Japanese officials reacted angrily to police reports that a U.S. Air Force serviceman on Okinawa was suspected of breaking into a home and punching a 13-year-old boy. That alleged incident came in the wake of two American sailors being accused of raping a woman on the island.