DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The Japanese Navy has volunteered its ships' logistical and medical services to the multinational task force clearing mines from the Persian Gulf, a Japanese defense officer said Sunday.
'So far there has been one incident in which a German sailor was transported for medical treatment aboard the Japanese command ship JDS Hayase,' said Cmdr. Masami Kawamura, Japanese Maritime Self Defence Forces operations liaison officer.
Japan previously has worked with the U.S. Navy in training exercDs5s, but it is the first time that the Japanese Navy has provided facilities to foreign military ships during actual operations, Kawamura and diplomatic sources in the gulf said.
The JMSDF's deployment of four minesweepers and two support ships to the gulf also marks Japan's first naval operations outside its waters since World War II.
'In addition to the importance of the Japanese navy's presence here, it is historically significant that the JMSDF is cooperating on these matters,'a Japanese diplomatic source in Abu Dhabi said.
The diplomatic source said Japan was offering to allow the German navy to land its Sea King Mark 41 helicopters on the Japanese supply ship JDS Tokiwa.
'It is the first time German helicopters and other navies will use Japanese ships for support,' the source said.
Kuwamura said in the first incident providing support facilities to other navies, a German sailor was transferred from one of Germany's minesweepers to Hayase, where his illness was determined by a Japanese doctor to require evacuation.
The sailor was then taken by U.S. Navy helicopter to Bahrain and later returned to Germany.
'It was good cooperation between the German, Japanese, and American navies,' Cdr. Kawamura said.
On June 20, Japan's vice minister of defence granted permission to the JMSDF forces in the Gulf to provide refuelling, logistical and medical support facilities to the eight other navies of the multinational mine clearing forces in the gulf, Kawamura said.
Aside from the medical support, there have been no refuelling or other exchanges since then, he said.
In an interview on June 18, Kawamura said he and Cmdr. Hans Laubner, the commander of the German navy helicopter detachment, had made a test flight from Manama, Bahrain to Tokiwa to familiarize themselves with landing procedures.
He said the JMSDF, which has no helicopters, could use Germany's Sea Kings in case of medical emergencies or to transport spare parts for ship repair.
The German Navy on June 14 announced in Dubai it was seeking permission to land its helicopters on Tokiwa.
Since they began operating in the gulf minefields on June 5, Japan's mine sweepers have found and destroyed 17 mines, a Japanese Embassy statement issued in Bahrain on July 2 said.
