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China is increasing its military pressure on Taiwan. If an emergency occurs, there is a high risk that the impact could spread to the Sakishima Islands.
The public and private sectors must work together to develop a thorough evacuation system that will protect people on the remote islands.
The government has announced a plan to evacuate residents of the Sakishima Islands to areas such as Kyushu with an eye on an emergency in Taiwan. The plan has been devised based on the Civil Protection Law, which will be applied to “armed attack situations,” where an armed attack has occurred, and “situations where armed attacks are anticipated,” where an armed attack against the country is likely.
This plan outlines an evacuation of 120,000 people — 110,000 residents, including people from Miyako, Ishigaki and Yonaguni islands, as well as 10,000 tourists — to Kyushu within six days, via private aircraft and ships. It calls for the evacuees to be accommodated at hotels and ryokan inns in a total of 32 municipalities spanning all seven prefectures of Kyushu and Yamaguchi Prefecture.
To that end, the central government and these prefectural governments have secured the cooperation of airlines and shipping companies. They have also asked accommodation facilities to accept these evacuees.
The central and local governments have a responsibility to protect the people in the event of an emergency. It is laudable that both the central and local governments have worked together to draw up an evacuation plan for the first time.
The security environment in the Nansei region has rapidly deteriorated, and crisis awareness has heightened among residents on the islands. Such factors likely provided a boost to the formulation of this evacuation plan.
However, there are still issues that need to be resolved.
The plan foresees the evacuation of residents starting when an armed attack is anticipated, but the situation could deteriorate to the point where it becomes impossible to obtain the cooperation of airlines and shipping companies. In such cases, the Self-Defense Forces and the Japan Coast Guard are expected to be involved in evacuating residents on the islands.
Will the SDF be able to deal with the evacuation of residents while responding to an armed attack? It is important to examine how the plan would work in a variety of different situations.
There are reportedly nearly 8,000 people on the Sakishima Islands who require special attention, such as people who are disabled or in need of nursing care. Securing transport for these people and medical personnel to accompany them is also a serious issue.
The government intends to finalize the evacuation plan next fiscal year after working out the details. To prevent the plan from ending up as a castle built in the air, it is crucial to thoroughly inform residents of the plan and hold operational drills repeatedly with the participation of as many people as possible.
The municipalities of Ishigaki and Yonaguni have asked that runways be extended to allow the SDF to use local airports in the event of an emergency, among other requests. However, the Okinawa prefectural government, which oversees these airports, has been reluctant to approve the requests, saying that such moves could lead to the airports being targeted in an attack.
How can the safety of residents be ensured if the prefectural government is stuck in such old-fashioned thinking that focuses on the possibility of Japan getting caught up in combat? The prefectural government should face up to the harsh reality of the security environment.
