1.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
2.
Japan Ground Self-Defense Force
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The Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, or JGSDF, is the main branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, responsible for land-based military operations, and is the de facto army of Japan. Created on July 1,1954, it is the largest of the three services of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, the JGSDF is chiefly tasked with maintaining internal security in Japan. The Force operates under the command of the chief of the staff, based in the city of Ichigaya, Shinjuku. The present chief of staff is General Kiyofumi Iwata, the JGSDF numbered around 150,000 soldiers in 2008. As of 2010, the remained the same at approximately 150,000 personnel. Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration in 1945, and, in compliance with Article 9, both were replaced by the United States Armed Forces occupation force, which assumed responsibility for the external defense of Japan. On the outbreak of the Korean War, many U. S. units were transferred to Korea, accordingly, in mid-1952, the National Police Reserve was expanded to 110,000 men and named the National Safety Forces. Japan continued to improve its defensive capabilities, the enabling legislation for this was the 1954 Self-Defense Forces Act. For a long period, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force possessed an ability to hold off a Soviet invasion of Hokkaido. Zbigniew Brzezinski observed in 1972 that it seemed optimized to fight ‘a Soviet invasion conducted on American patterns of a quarter of a century ago, in 1989, basic training for lower-secondary and upper-secondary academy graduates began in the training brigade and lasted approximately three months. Specialized enlisted and non-commissioned officer candidate courses were available in branch schools, advanced technical, flight, medical and command and staff officer courses were also run by the JGSDF. Like the maritime and air forces, the JGSDF ran a youth cadet program offering technical training to school graduates below military age in return for a promise of enlistment. Because of population density and urbanization on the Japanese islands, only limited areas are available for large-scale training, the JGSDF has two reserve components, the rapid-reaction reserve component and the main reserve component. Members of the rapid-reaction component train 30 days a year, members of the main reserve train five days a year. As of December 2007, there were 8,425 members of the reserve component and 22,404 members of the main reserve component. JGSDF divisions and brigades are combined arms units with infantry, armored and they are regionally independent and permanent entities. The divisions strength varies from 6,000 to 9,000 personnel
3.
Airborne forces
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Airborne forces are military units, usually light infantry, set up to be moved by aircraft and dropped into battle, typically by parachute. Thus, they can be placed behind enemy lines, and have the capability to deploy almost anywhere with little warning. The formations are limited only by the number and size of their aircraft, so given enough capacity a huge force can appear out of nowhere in minutes, Major Lewis H. Brereton and his superior Brigadier General Billy Mitchell suggested dropping elements of the U. S. 1st Division behind German lines near Metz, the operation was planned for February 1919 but the war ended before such an attack could be seriously planned. Mitchell conceived that US troops could be trained to utilize parachutes. Following the war, the United States Army Air Service experimented with the concept of having carried on the wings of aircraft pulled off by the opening of their parachutes. The first true paratroop drop was by Italy in November 1927, within a few years several battalions had been raised and were eventually formed into two Folgore and Nembo divisions. Although these would fight with distinction in World War II. Men drawn from the Italian parachute forces were dropped in a special operation in North Africa in 1943 in an attempt to destroy parked aircraft of the United States Army Air Forces. Subsequently, on May 10,1928, Second Lieutenant César Álvarez War Palmas Las voluntarily jumped from a height of 3,000 meters, then on May 16,1928, Major Fernando Melgar Conde and Sergeant 1st. Jose Pineda Castro, jumped from the famous Las Palmas at altitudes of 2,000 and 4,300 meters, at about the same time, the Soviet Union was also experimenting with the idea, planning to drop entire units complete with vehicles and light tanks. To help train enough experienced jumpers, parachute clubs were organized with the aim of transferring into the armed forces if needed, one of the observing parties, Germany, was particularly interested. In 1936, Major F. W. Immans was ordered to set up a school at Stendal. The military had purchased large numbers of Junkers Ju 52 aircraft which were slightly modified for use as paratroop transports in addition to their other duties. The first training class was known as Ausbildungskommando Immans and they commenced the first course on May 3,1936. Other nations, including Argentina, Peru, Japan, France, France became the first nation to organize women in an airborne unit. Recruiting 200 nurses who during peacetime would parachute into natural disasters, several groups within the German armed forces attempted to raise their own paratroop formations, resulting in confusion. As a result, Luftwaffe General Kurt Student was put in command of developing a paratrooper force to be known as the Fallschirmjäger
4.
Air assault
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Invariably the assaulting troops are highly dependent on aerial fire support provided by the armed helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft escorting the VTOL. Air assault should not be confused with air attack, air strike, or air raid, Air assault and air mobility are related concepts. However, air assault is distinctly a combat insertion rather than transportation to an area in the vicinity of combat, Air assault operations are not merely movements of soldiers, weapons, and materiel by Army aviation units and must not be construed as such. Air assault units can vary in organization, using not only in transport but also as close air fire support, medical evacuation helicopters. Airmobile artillery is often assigned to air assault deployments, units vary in size, but are typically company- or brigade-sized units. Airmobile units are designed and trained for air insertion and vertical envelopment, air resupply, one specific type of air assault unit is the US Army air cavalry. It differs from regular air assault units only in fulfilling a traditional cavalry reconnaissance, similarly, the US 101st Airborne Division was originally classed as airborne, then airmobile and now air assault. Air mobility has been a key concept in offensive operations since the 1930s, initial approaches to air mobility focused on airborne and glider-borne troops. During World War II many assaults were done by military gliders, the World War Two era German Fallschirmjäger and Brandenburgers glider borne paras laid the foundation for modern day Air Assault operations. In 1941 the U. S. Army quickly adopted this concept of offensive operations initially utilizing wooden gliders before the development of helicopters, following the war faster aircraft led to the abandonment of the flimsy wooden gliders with the then new helicopters taking their place. Another example being the German Brandenburgers glider borne operation at Ypenburg during World War Two, in 1946, U. S. Marine General Roy S. During this time, The Commandant of the Marine Corps, Alexander Vandegrift and this board recommended that the USMC develop transport helicopters in order to allow a diffused attack on enemy shores. It also recommended that the USMC form an experimental helicopter squadron. HMX-1 was commissioned in 1947 with Sikorsky HO3S-1s, in 1948 the Marine Corps Schools came out with Amphibious Operations—Employment of Helicopters, or Phib-31, which was the first manual for helicopter airmobile operations. The Marines used the vertical envelopment instead of air mobility or air assault. HMX-1 performed its first vertical envelopment from the deck of a carrier in an exercise in 1949. American forces later used helicopters for support and transport to great effect during the Korean War showing that the helicopter could be a versatile, the first helicopter airlift and helicopter sling load mission was conducted on September 13,1951 during the Korean War. Operation Windmill I was conducted by the United States Marine Corps in support of a clearing the enemy from a series of ridges around an extinct volcano called The Punchbowl. In total seven HRS-1 Marine helicopters made 28 flights that delivered 8,550 kg of supplies and evacuated 74 seriously wounded men
5.
Reconnaissance
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In military operations, reconnaissance is the exploration outside an area occupied by friendly forces to gain information about natural features and enemy presence. Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops, ships or submarines, manned/unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, satellites, espionage normally is not reconnaissance, because reconnaissance is a militarys special forces operating ahead of its main forces, spies are non-combatants operating behind enemy lines. Often called recce or recon, the verb is reconnaître. Traditionally, reconnaissance was a role that was adopted by the cavalry, speed was key in these maneuvers, thus infantry was ill suited to the task. From horses to vehicles, for warriors throughout history, commanders procured their ability to have speed and mobility, to mount and dismount, skirmishing is a traditional skill of reconnaissance, as well as harassment of the enemy. Reconnaissance conducted by ground forces includes special reconnaissance, armored reconnaissance, amphibious reconnaissance, aerial reconnaissance is reconnaissance carried out by aircraft. The purpose is to weather conditions, map terrain, and may include military purposes such as observing tangible structures, particular areas. Naval forces use aerial and satellite reconnaissance to observe enemy forces, navies also undertake hydrographic surveys and intelligence gathering. Reconnaissance satellites provide military commanders with photographs of enemy forces and other intelligence, military forces also use geographical and meteorological information from Earth observation satellites. A tracker needs to pay attention to both the environment and the psychology of his enemy. Knowledge of human psychology, sociology, and cultural backgrounds is necessary to know the actions of the enemy and this is almost as necessary as to know the physical character of the country, its climate and products. Certain people will do certain things almost without fail, certain other things, perfectly feasible, they will not do. There is no danger of knowing too much of the habits of an enemy. One should neither underestimate the enemy nor credit him with superhuman powers, fear and courage are latent in every human being, though roused into activity by very diverse means. Types of reconnaissance, Terrain-oriented reconnaissance is a survey of the terrain, force-oriented reconnaissance focuses on the enemy forces and may include target acquisition. Civil-oriented reconnaissance focuses on the dimension of the battlespace. The techniques and objectives are not mutually exclusive, it is up to the commander whether they are carried out separately or by the same unit, some military elements tasked with reconnaissance are armed only for self-defense, and rely on stealth to gather information. Others are well-enough armed to also deny information to the enemy by destroying their reconnaissance elements, reconnaissance-in-force is a type of military operation or military tactics used specifically to probe an enemys disposition
6.
Chiba Prefecture
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Chiba Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region and the Greater Tokyo Area. The sixth most populous prefecture, and 27th largest by area, Chiba is on the east coast of Honshu and largely consists of the Bōsō Peninsula. The name of Chiba Prefecture in Japanese is formed from two kanji characters, the first, 千, means thousand and the second, 葉 means leaves. The name first appears as an ancient kuni no miyatsuko, or regional command office, the name was adopted by a branch of the Taira clan, which moved to the area in present-day Chiba City in the late Heian period. The branch of the Taira adopted the name and became the Chiba clan and this compound is used in terms such as the Keiyō Line, Keiyō Road, Keiyō Rinkai Railway Rinkai Main Line, and the Keiyō Industrial Zone. Chiba Prefecture was settled in times, as evidenced by the Jōmon period remains in every part of the region. The prefecture holds the largest kaizuka sea shell mounds in Japan, evidence of a population in the prefecture that relied on the rich marine products of the Pacific Ocean. Kofun burial mounds are found across the prefecture, with the largest group being in Futtsu along Tokyo Bay, in the Asuka period, under the Taika Reform of 645, the administrative structure of present-day Chiba Prefecture changed significantly. Awa Province at the south of Chiba Prefecture, was separated from Kazusa Prefecture in 718 and these administrative units existed until they were abolished and merged into Chiba Prefecture after the Meiji restoration. The central government established a provincial temple in each province. The imperial court gradually extended its authority over the three provinces in the Nara and Heian periods, shōen feudal estates were established across the three provinces, and the region became an important source of tax revenue, agricultural and other products to the capital in Kyoto. As the Heian period progressed, however, the provincial governors came to exert military power independent of the central government in Kyoto. The Chiba clan broke entirely with the court and was instrumental in the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate. Chiba Prefecture was established on June 15,1873 with the merger of Kisarazu Prefecture, the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake caused widespread destruction in Chiba Prefecture, notably in the southernmost part of the Bōsō Peninsula, where 1,300 residents were killed. Koreans in several neighborhoods of Yachiyo were killed, and a tower was erected in 1972 near Yachiyodai Station to memorialize those killed in the incident, the militarization of Chiba Prefecture dates to the Russo-Japanese War. Coastal fortifications were built along Tokyo Bay as far south as Tateyama to protect the capital of the Japanese Empire from attack, after the United States took control of Saipan the northern part of the prefecture, most notably the city of Chiba and Chōshi, were firebombed. Much of the north of the prefecture was destroyed. Operation Coronet, one of two parts of Operation Downfall, was the land invasion of Tokyo in March 1946 by the United States
7.
Paratrooper
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Paratroopers are military parachutists — military personnel trained in parachuting into an operation and usually functioning as part of an airborne force. Military parachutists and parachutes were first used on a large scale during World War II for troop distribution and transportation, Paratroopers are often used to seize strategic objectives such as airfields or bridges. They are used for tactical advantage as they can be inserted into the battlefield from the air and they jump out of airplanes using their parachutes to land safely on the ground. It is one of the three types of forced entry strategic techniques for entering a theater of war, the two are by land and sea. Another common use for paratroopers is to establish an airhead for landing other units and this doctrine was first practically applied to warfare by the Italians and the Soviets. During World War II, however, the two countries ground forces were overstretched, leaving their elite paratroopers to be employed as regular infantry. The first extensive use of paratroopers was by the Germans during World War II and later in the war also by the Americans, owing to the limited capacity of cargo aircraft of the period they rarely, if ever, jumped in groups much larger than 20 from one aircraft. In English language parlance, this load of paratroopers is called a stick, the terms come from the common use of white chalk on the sides of aircraft and vehicles to mark and update numbers of personnel and equipment being emplaned. In World War II, paratroopers most often used parachutes of a circular or round design and these parachutes could be steered to a small degree by pulling on the risers and suspension lines which attach to the parachute canopy itself. German paratroopers, whose harnesses had only a single riser attached at the back, today, paratroopers still use round parachutes, or round parachutes modified as to be more fully controlled with toggles. The parachutes are deployed by a static line. Mobility of the parachutes is often limited to prevent scattering of the troops when a large number parachute together. Some military exhibition units and special forces units use ram-air parachutes, many countries have one or several paratrooper units, usually associated to the national Army or Air Force, but in some cases to the Navy. Argentina was the first country on the continent of South America to use Paratroopers, the first paratroopers were issued jump helmets similar to that used by the British at the time, as the rest of the equipment slightly based on the Fallschirmjäger. The 4th Parachute Brigade is a unit of the Argentine Army specialised in airborne assault operations and it is based in Córdoba, Córdoba Province. The Rapid Deployment Force is based on this unit, the members of the unit wear Boina Rojas of the paratroopers with unit badges. During the Second World War the Australian Army formed the 1st Parachute Battalion, however, in the post-war period Australias parachute capability was primarily maintained by special forces units. In the 1970s and 1980s a parachute capability was revived, while a Parachute Battalion Group based on the 3rd Battalion
8.
Guerrilla warfare
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The term, the diminutive form of war in Spanish, is usually translated as little war, and the word, guerrilla, has been used to refer to the concept since the 18th century, and perhaps earlier. In correct Spanish usage, a person who is a member of a guerrilla is a guerrillero if male, the term guerrilla was used in English as early as 1809, to refer to the fighters, and also to denote a group or band of such fighters. However, in most languages guerrilla still denotes the style of warfare. The use of the diminutive evokes the differences in number, scale, guerrillas usually carries positive connotations, and is often used by such fighters themselves and by their sympathizers, while their foes in many cases call them terrorists. Making an objective definition of the difference between a guerrilla and a terrorist has proven a difficult task, the strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare tend to focus around the use of a small, mobile force competing against a larger, more unwieldy one. The Guerrilla focuses on organizing in small units, depending on the support of the local population, tactically, the guerrilla army would avoid any confrontation with large units of enemy troops, but seek and eliminate small groups of soldiers to minimize losses and exhaust the opposing force. Not limiting their targets to personnel, enemy resources are preferred targets. All of that is to weaken the strength, to cause the enemy eventually to be unable to prosecute the war any longer. It is often misunderstood that guerrilla warfare must involve disguising as civilians to cause enemy troops to fail in telling friend from foe, however, this is not a primary feature of a guerrilla war. This type of war can be practiced anywhere there are places for combatants to cover themselves, at least one author credits the ancient Chinese work The Art of War with providing instruction in such tactics to Mao. The Chinese general and strategist Sun Tzu, in his The Art of War or 600 BC to 501 BC, was the earliest to propose the use of guerrilla warfare and this directly inspired the development of modern guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla tactics were employed by prehistoric tribal warriors against enemy tribes. Evidence of conventional warfare, on the hand, did not emerge until 3100 BC in Egypt. Since the Enlightenment, ideologies such as nationalism, liberalism, socialism, because of the innovative tactics he used during his command, he made himself the name of Terror Romanorum. A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency operation involves actions taken by the government of a nation to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it. Counter-insurgency operations are common during war, occupation and armed rebellions, the two most influential of scholars of counter-insurgency have been Westerners whose job it had been to fight insurgents. Robert Thompson fought during the Malayan Emergency and David Galula fought during the Algerian War, together these officers advocated multi-pronged strategies to win over the civilian population to the side of the counter-insurgent. The widely distributed and influential work of Sir Robert Thompson, counter-insurgency expert of the Malayan Emergency, thompsons underlying assumption was that the counter-insurgent was committed to improving the rule of law and bettering local governance
9.
Special forces
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Special forces and special operations forces are military or police units trained to conduct special operations. The term special forces in the United States refers to the U. S. Armys forces, in Russian-speaking countries special forces are typically called spetsnaz, an acronym for special purpose. Likewise, Russian speakers refer to special forces of nations as spetsnaz, for example. Special Forces would be referred to as amerikanski spetsnaz in Russian, other significant roles lay in reconnaissance, providing essential intelligence from near or among the enemy and increasingly in combating irregular forces, their infrastructure and activities. Hamilcar Barca in Sicily had specialized troops trained to launch several offensives per day, in the late Roman or early Byzantine period, Roman fleets used small, fast, camouflaged ships crewed by selected men for scouting and commando missions. In Japan, ninjas were used for reconnaissance, espionage and as assassins, bodyguards or fortress guards, during the Napoleonic wars, rifle and sapper units were formed that held specialised roles in reconnaissance and skirmishing and were not committed to the formal battle lines. The British Indian Army deployed two special forces during their wars, the Corps of Guides formed in 1846 and the Gurkha Scouts. During the Second Boer War the British Army felt the need for specialised units became most apparent. This unit was formed in 1900 by Lord Lovat and early on reported to an American, Major Frederick Russell Burnham, after the war, Lovats Scouts went on to formally become the British Armys first sniper unit. Additionally, the Bushveldt Carbineers, formed in 1901, can be seen as an unconventional warfare unit. Modern special forces emerged during the Second World War, in 1940, the British Commandos were formed following Winston Churchills call for specially trained troops of the hunter class, who can develop a reign of terror down the enemy coast. A staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Clarke, had already submitted such a proposal to General Sir John Dill, Dill, aware of Churchills intentions, approved Clarkes proposal and on 23 June 1940, the first Commando raid took place. The Special Service Brigade was quickly expanded to 12 units which became known as Commandos, each Commando had a lieutenant colonel as the commanding officer and numbered around 450 men. In December 1940 a Middle East Commando depot was formed with the responsibility of training and supplying reinforcements for the Commando units in that theatre, in February 1942 the Commando training depot at Achnacarry in the Scottish Highlands was established by Brigadier Charles Haydon. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Vaughan, the Commando depot was responsible for training complete units, the training regime was for the time innovative and physically demanding, and far in advance of normal British Army training. The depot staff were all hand picked, with the ability to any of the volunteers. Training and assessment started immediately on arrival, with the volunteers having to complete an 8-mile march with all their equipment from the Spean Bridge railway station to the commando depot, exercises were conducted using live ammunition and explosives to make training as realistic as possible. Physical fitness was a prerequisite, with cross country runs and boxing matches to improve fitness, speed and endurance marches were conducted up and down the nearby mountain ranges and over assault courses that included a zip-line over Loch Arkaig, all while carrying arms and full equipment
10.
Japan Airlines Flight 123
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Japan Airlines Flight 123 was a scheduled domestic Japan Airlines passenger flight from Tokyos Haneda Airport to Osaka International Airport, Japan. The crash site was on Osutaka Ridge, near Mount Osutaka, the explosive decompression was caused by a faulty repair performed by Boeing after a tailstrike incident during a landing seven years earlier. A doubler plate on the bulkhead of the plane was improperly repaired. The accident aircraft was registered JA8119 and was a Boeing 747-146SR and its first flight was on January 28,1974. It had more than 25,000 airframe hours and more than 18,800 cycles, at the time of the accident the aircraft was on the fifth of its six planned flights of the day. There were fifteen members, including three cockpit crew and 12 flight attendants. A veteran pilot, having logged approximately 12,400 total flight hours, roughly 4,850 of which were accumulated flying 747s, first Officer Yutaka Sasaki from Kobe flew Flight 123 as a training flight as part of his requirements to be promoted to Captain. Sasaki, who was 39 years old at the time of the incident, had approximately 4,000 total flight hours to his credit and he had logged roughly 2,650 hours in the 747. Flight Engineer Hiroshi Fukuda from Kyoto, the 46-year-old veteran flight engineer of the flight who had approximately 9,800 total flight hours, the flight was around the Obon holiday period in Japan, when many Japanese people make yearly trips to their hometowns or resorts. 299 of the passengers originated from Hyogo Prefecture and Osaka Prefecture in the Kansai region, around twenty-one non-Japanese boarded the flight. Some foreigners had dual nationalities, and some of them were residents of Japan, the four survivors, all female, were seated on the left side and toward the middle of seat rows 54–60, in the rear of the aircraft. Air Disaster Volume 2 stated that she was wedged between branches in a tree, kawakamis parents and younger sister died in the crash, and she was the last survivor to be released from hospital. She was treated at the Matsue Red Cross Hospital in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture before her release on Friday, among the dead were singer Kyu Sakamoto, and Japanese banker Akihisa Yukawa, the father of solo violinist Diana Yukawa. The aircraft landed at Haneda from New Chitose Airport at 4, 50PM as JL514. After more than an hour on the ramp, Flight 123 pushed back from gate 18 at 6,04 p. m. and took off from Runway 15L at Haneda Airport in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, at 6,12 p. m. twelve minutes behind schedule. This caused an explosive decompression, causing pressurized air to rush out of the cabin, the compressed air then burst the unpressurized fuselage aft of the bulkhead unseating the vertical stabilizer and severing all four hydraulic lines. A photograph taken from the some time later confirmed that the vertical stabilizer was missing. Loss of cabin pressure at high altitude caused a lack of oxygen throughout, Flight attendants, including one who was off-duty, administered oxygen to various passengers using hand-held tanks
11.
Gunma Prefecture
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Gunma Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the northwest corner of the Kantō region on the main Honshu island. Japan was without horses until around the fifth century CE, the ancient province of Gunma was a center of the horsebreeding and trading activities for the newly immigrated continental peoples. The arrival of horses and the remains of horse-tackle coincides with the arrival of a migration from the mainland. From this point forward, the became a vital part of Japanese military maneuvers. When Mount Haruna erupted in the late 6th century, Japan was still in the pre-historical phase, the Gunma Prefectural archaeology unit in 1994 was able to date the eruption through zoological anthropology at the corral sites that were buried in ash. In the past, Gunma was joined with Tochigi Prefecture and called Kenu Province and this was later divided into Kami-tsu-ke and Shimo-tsu-ke. The area is referred to as Jomo. For most of Japanese history, Gunma was known as the province of Kozuke, the first modern silk factories were built with Italian and French assistance at Annaka in the 1870s. The modern Japanese army gunned down farmers with new repeating rifles built in Japan, the farmers in Gunma were said to be the first victims of the Murata rifle. In the twentieth century, the Japanese aviation pioneer Nakajima Chikushi of Oizumi, Gunma Prefecture, the factory now produces Subaru motorcars and other products under the name of Fuji Heavy Industries. In the 1930s, German architect Bruno Julius Florian Taut lived and conducted research for a while in Takasaki, the Girard Incident, which disturbed US-Japanese relations in the 1950s, occurred in Gunma in 1957, at Soumagahara Base near Shibukawa. Four modern prime ministers are from Gunma, namely, Takeo Fukuda, Yasuhiro Nakasone, Keizo Obuchi, and Yasuo Fukuda, one of only eight landlocked prefectures in Japan, Gunma is the northwestern-most prefecture of the Kantō plain. Except for the central and southeast areas, where most of the population is concentrated, to the north are Niigata and Fukushima prefectures, while to the east lies Tochigi Prefecture. To the west lies Nagano Prefecture, and Saitama Prefecture is to the south, some of the major mountains in Gunma are Mount Akagi, Mount Haruna, Mount Myōgi, Mount Nikkō-Shirane and Mount Asama, which is located on the Nagano border. Major rivers include the Tone River, the Agatsuma River, and this is because of the kara-kaze, a strong, dry wind which occurs in the winter when the snow falls on the coasts of Niigata. The wind carrying clouds with snow are obstructed by the Echigo Mountains, for this reason, the wind changes into the kara-kaze. More traditional industries include sericulture and agriculture, gunmas major agricultural products include cabbages and konjacs. Gunma produces 90% of Japans konjacs, and two-thirds of the farms in the village of Tsumagoi are cabbage farms, also, the city of Ōta is famous for car industry, notably the Subaru factory
12.
Yamanashi Prefecture
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Yamanashi Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of the main island of Honshu. The capital of the prefecture is the city of Kōfu, the Maruyama and Choshizuka Kofun located on Sone Hill of Nakamichi Town are believed to have been built from the end of the 4th century. From these remains it can be assumed that the people of Sone Hill had great influence, during the Heian period, Kai Province was created in this area. Among the many Kaigenji generations, those of the Takeda, Ogasawara, during the Sengoku period of the 16th century, Takeda Shingen attained the status of daimyō and built Tsuzuji Mansion and the Yōgai Castle in Kōfu. From this base, he attempted to unify and control Japan, after Takeda’s death in 1582, Kai-no-Kuni came under the control of the Oda and Toyotomi clans before being subsumed into the Tokugawa shogunate during the Edo period. Beneath the Edo shogunate, the Kofu clan and the Yamura clan were formed, with the development of the Kōshū Kaidō and Fuji River transport, goods, materials and culture flowed into the region. By the mid-19th century, the contradictions of military government and clan system caused stability to erode and resistance to erupt across Japan, preceding the Kōshū-Katsunuma battle, Kofu Castle had been captured by troops loyal to the Emperor Meiji. The province was renamed Kōfu Prefecture in 1869 and then Yamanashi Prefecture in 1871, the anniversary of this event on November 20,1872, is now celebrated as Prefectural Citizen’s Day in Yamanashi. In the early part of the Meiji period, industrial promotion policies furthered sericulture, silk textile production and wine making industries. In 1903, after seven years of construction, including the building of a three mile long tunnel at the Sasago Pass, the Chūō Railway Line from Hachiōji and central Tokyo finally reached Kōfu. The reduced journey times to the capital and the port of Yokohama brought significant change to local industry, agricultural production in farming communities was still on a small scale at the turn of the century and land reforms had yet to be introduced. From the 1920s however, tenancy and contract disputes between landowners and farmers in Yamanashi grew increasingly common, in 1926, the Minobu Railway Line connecting Kōfu with Shizuoka Prefecture opened, bringing an end to Fuji River transportation. The capital city, Kōfu, suffered damage during a major air raid on the night of 6 July 1945. Small scale manufacturing industries and commerce grew at rapid speed during the expansion of the post-war Japanese economy, the maglev line is designed to ultimately connect Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka with a station also planned to the South of Kofu. Central Government permission to proceed with an extension to the existing test track was granted on May 27,2011, at the end of 2013 construction was already well advanced as far as Fuefuki. Yamanashi Prefecture is bordered by Tokyo, Kanagawa Prefecture, Saitama Prefecture, Shizuoka Prefecture, the prefecture is landlocked, with high mountains surrounding the central Kōfu Basin. Mount Fuji and the Fuji Five Lakes region is located on the border with Shizuoka. Mt. Fuji provides rain shadow effects, and as a result, 78% of the prefecture is covered by forests, making it one of the most densely wooded prefectures in Japan
Japan
Japan Ground Self-Defense Force
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