The US ambassador to Japan visits southern islands at the forefront of China tension

TOKYO (AP) —

The U.S. Ambassador to Japan stressed Friday the importance of increased deterrence and his country’s commitment to the alliance with its key ally as he visited two southwestern Japanese islands at the forefront of Tokyo’s tension with Beijing.

Japan has been making a southwest shift of its defense posture, and is further accelerating its military buildup under the 2022 security strategy which focuses on counter-strike capability with long-range cruise missiles.

Highlighting their solid alliance in the Indo-Pacific, Rahm Emanuel visited Yonaguni, Japan’s westernmost island just east of Taiwan, a self-governed island also claimed by China. He later visited another Japanese island Ishigaki, home to Japan Coast Guard patrol boats defending the disputed East China Sea island s and Japanese fishermen from armed Chinese coast guard ships that routinely enter Japanese waters.

Emanuel was the first U.S. ambassador to visit Yonaguni. Escorted by local mayor Kenichi Itokazu he looked towards Taiwan, only 110 kilometers (68 miles) away.

Emanuel met with a local fisherman, one of the victims of China’s increasingly assertive actions in the regional seas.

The lives of Japanese fishermen were affected when five missiles China fired into Japan’s exclusive economic zone landed in the area in 2022 after the visit of the then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, Emanuel said. The ambassador said the fisherman told him that he could not sell his fish for about a week after the Chinese action.

“If they don’t have deterrence, that’s going to be worse,” Emanuel told the Associated Press from Ishigaki, a second island he visited Friday. “If you have a very robust deterrence, it ensures that there is peace, ensures that there