History
After the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War, American occupation forces had allowed the temporary formation of an airborne party from within the ranks of the JGSDF as tensions continued to increase between the United States and the former Soviet Union in 1955. In 1958, the Airborne Brigade's first platoon was formed after Hayao Kinugasa was made the first commander of the unit. It continued to increase in numbers as ranger and free-fall training were added in 1962 and 1969. An additional armed transport unit was established in 1973.
In 1985, the 1st Airborne Brigade was involved in rescue operations of the downed Japan Airlines Flight 123 in the ridges of Mount Takamagahara in the Gunma Prefecture, marking the first time that the Brigade was seen in the public eye. Later on, they were also deployed in Yamanashi Prefecture for civil operations and in the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995.
A Guide Unit had been established on October 20, 1999 and based at Funabashi, Chiba. Preparations to create a new special forces unit went underway under the Brigade in 2000.
In 2003, the framework of the Special Operations Group was established as an anti-guerrilla/terrorist unit embedded in the Brigade, but was established and separated from the Brigade in 2004 and placed under the control of the Defense Agency via the JGSDF like most of the JSDF's special forces units.
Brigade paratroopers are involved in Iraq as the Brigade has started to rotate ground personnel as part of the Japanese government's commitment to Iraq, though they could be withdrawn from Iraqi soil anytime before the end of 2006. They have been withdrawn alongside the bulk of the Japanese Iraqi Reconstruction Support Group in the middle of 2006. The brigade was added to the Central Readiness Force on March 28, 2007.
On October 9, 2006, members of the Oregon National Guard had a hand in assisting soldiers of the 1st Airborne Brigade in establishing a sniper school to train the unit's first generation of highly skilled snipers during Orient Shield 07.
Read more about this topic: 1st Airborne Brigade (Japan)
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“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)