Japan expanding by laying claim to nearby islands

Some of the islands are claimed to belong to China .... according to China and some as belonging to South Korea ... according to South Korea.  Gonna be fun to see how this develops.  

Nobuhiro Kubo writing at Reuters:
....Japan expands army footprint for first time in 40 years, risks angering China.
Japan began its first military expansion at the western end of its island chain in more than 40 years on Saturday, breaking ground on a radar station on a tropical island off Taiwan.

The move risks angering China, locked in a dispute with Japan over nearby islands which they both claim.

Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, who attended a ceremony on Yonaguni island to mark the start of construction, suggested the military presence could be enlarged to other islands in the seas southwest of Japan's main islands.



"This is the first deployment since the U.S. returned Okinawa (1972) and calls for us to be more on guard are growing," Onodera told reporters. "I want to build an operation able to properly defend islands that are part of Japan's territory."......