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| Maritime Self-Defense Forces submarine’Soryu’ (captured by NHK website) © News1 |
On the 8th, controversy over the “Situation Report Delayed” is arising in Japan over the Marine Self-Defense Force’s submarine’Soryu’, which collided with a commercial ship near Kochi Prefecture, Japan.
According to Japanese media such as Jiji News and the Sankei Shimbun, on the 9th, at 10:58 a.m. the previous day, while Soryu was floating on the surface of Cape Ashizuri, Kochi Prefecture, a civilian merchant ship in Hong Kong collided and three submarine crew were injured.
However, at the time, the collision caused Soryu’s communication equipment to be damaged, and the incident was reported to the Maritime Self-Defense Force Command at around 2:20 pm, about four hours or more.
Japanese government spokesman Kato Katsunobu, at a regular briefing, added that it was around 2:50 pm the previous day that Defense Minister Kishi Nobuo and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga received reports of the incident.
On that day, Minister Kato apologized, “I am very sorry for causing concern to the public,” and said, “This is a task that needs to be improved. We will review it with a strong awareness of the problem.”
As the controversy grew, Hiroshi Yamamura, head of the Maritime Self-Defense Force, who is the chief of our naval staff, held an apology press conference on the 9th and said, “We couldn’t assume a situation where all communications would be temporarily cut off.”
He added, “We apologize for causing great annoyance to the people,” he added, adding that he would consider introducing a means of communication to be used in an emergency in the future.
Minister Kato said that the Japan Maritime Security Administration, the Ministry of Defense Accident Investigation Committee, and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport’s Transportation Safety Committee have initiated investigations to determine the exact cause of the accident.
Soryu, commissioned in 2009, is a 84m long, 2950t submarine with displacement. It has 6 torpedo launchers and has a capacity of 65.