GSDF Officer Made New Recruits Run 8 Hours without Stop in July; Said He Made Them Do It Because He ‘Cared about Them’

The Yomiuri Shimbun

20:50 JST, January 30, 2024

A male second lieutenant of the Ground Self-Defense Force has been reprimanded for making new recruits run some eight hours without a break in summer, the GSDF’s Camp Tokushima announced Tuesday.

The new recruits were said to have had no health problems.

The second lieutenant, belonging to the 14th aviation unit of the North Tokushima branch camp, ordered five to seven new recruits to run as part of “training” on July 30, 2022, when he was in charge of instruction. He made them run outdoors for eight hours without a break. He also made them run similarly long hours the next day.

The man reported the details of the “training” session to his supervisor.

“I trained the recruits in this way because I cared about them,” he was quoted as saying.