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C-17 transport jet flew from the United States to touch down at
the Yokota air base near Tokyo, and pick up three truckloads of
plastic-wrapped boxes. Japan's government declined to list the
equipment inside.
"We won U.S. military support to use their planes so we are
sending them on those aircraft so the equipment can arrive as
soon as possible," said Makoto Oniki, Japan's vice minister of
defence.
He spoke at the U.S. military's Asian air transport hub as
ground crews behind him loaded the cargo onto the C-17, which
can carry about 77 tons.
Japan has followed its ally, the United States, and other
Western industrialised nations in imposing tough sanctions on
Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
It fears the attack, described by President Vladimir Putin as a
"special operation", threatens international norms and could
embolden neighbouring China to use its military in East Asia.
"Japan's loud voice has made this a global response, because
what happens in Ukraine does not stay in Ukraine," the U.S.
ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, said at the Yokota event.
Emanuel and Oniki were joined by the deputy chief of Ukraine's
embassy in Tokyo, Oleksandr Semeniuk, who described Russia as
neo-Nazi.
Japan, which renounced the right to wage war after its World War
Two defeat, follows strict rules that ban weapon exports to
conflict zones or countries not subject to United Nations
resolutions.
(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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