Japan Press Weekly

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2015 March 4 - 10 [US FORCES]

Fuel oil leaked at US Iwakuni base

It has come to light that a fuel leakage incident occurred in January at the U.S. Marine Corps Iwakuni Air Station in Yamaguchi Prefecture.

Japanese Communist Party member of the Yamaguchi Prefectural Assembly Fujimoto Kazunori revealed this on March 3 in his question time at the assembly.

In response to Fujimoto, a prefectural government official said that the prefecture had received an explanation in regard to that accident from the Defense Ministry’s Chugoku-Shikoku Defense Bureau. According to them, 15.1 kiloliters of oil leaked on January 20 from a facility in the base to fuel K-130 air tankers, but the leakage was contained within the premises.

The prefectural official also said that at the beginning of this month an executive of the prefecture expressed concern about the accident and made a request to the Iwakuni defense office to determine the cause of the leak as well as provide relevant information without delay.

Fujimoto pointed to the fact that when the prefectural and base-hosting Iwakuni City governments had talks with the central government on February 4, the state gave no explanation about the leakage. The official replied that he will request the state authorities to offer more detailed information on the accident.