GSDF chief to resign over alleged coverup of activity logs

The Ground Self-Defense Force's chief of staff has decided to resign following allegations of a coverup of logs that recorded the daily activities of Japanese ground troops serving as U.N. peacekeepers in South Sudan, a government source said Thursday.

Gen. Toshiya Okabe declined to comment Thursday morning on whether he intends to step down. He was among top officials who decided not to reveal the existence of the logs, which the Defense Ministry had previously said were discarded, according to other government sources.

The development came as the Defense Ministry continues to be rattled by a series of media reports over the alleged coverup, which is said to have also involved Defense Minister Tomomi Inada. Inada has denied the allegations.

The ministry has conducted an internal probe into the scandal. Preparations are under way to announce the outcome Friday.

The issue dates back to December, when the ministry said it could not fulfill an information disclosure request for logs covering the GSDF's activities in July last year -- a time when the security situation in South Sudan was sharply deteriorating -- because the logs had been discarded.

The ministry reversed its earlier explanation in early February, saying that the information had been found on a computer of the Self-Defense Forces Joint Staff Office, and disclosing a part of it. But top SDF officials reportedly already knew then that the GSDF actually had the data from the beginning.

The logs described particularly tense situations in the fledgling African country and their disclosure last year could have adversely affected the government's push to continue the troop deployment and assign a new, and possibly riskier, security role during the U.N. mission.

Japan withdrew its GSDF troops from the U.N. mission at the end of May this year, saying the decision was made not because of deteriorating security conditions but because the GSDF participation over the past five years had produced significant results.

Okabe became the GSDF chief of staff in July last year. He was seen as a potential candidate to be promoted to chief of the SDF Joint Staff, the top uniformed officer in Japan's defense forces.