<![CDATA[Japan's military pilots have never encountered UFOs, defence minister says]>
A UFO researcher in Japan has expressed surprise at the announcement by Defence Minister Taro Kono that military pilots have not previously encountered an unidentified flying object (UFO), but that a plan will be drawn up on how best to respond in such a scenario.
Kono was on Tuesday responding to a question in a press conference about the release of videos taken by US Navy pilots that allegedly show a series of encounters with UFOs. The Japanese Ministry of Defence will ask its counterparts at the Pentagon for additional details about the clips, Kono said, including analysis of just what the footage shows.
"No SDF [Self-Defence Force] pilot has encountered a UFO. The videos have come from the US Defence Department so I would like to hear their analysis," Kato said. "I don't really believe in UFOs. We would like to establish procedures in the event an encounter takes place with a UFO."
According to Greg Sullivan, director of the Japan Centre for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Kono should be aware of at least half a dozen prior run-ins between Japanese aircrew and visitors from outer space, all of which have been reported to the government, as well as a number of civilian sightings of interplanetary craft the length and breadth of Japan.
The researcher has been cataloguing unexplained sightings and close encounters with visitors from outer space for more than a decade and says the Japanese government is "absolutely aware" of the group's work and its findings.
"One of the people I have interviewed is Mamoru Sato, who was a wing commander in the Air Self-Defence Force, and who collected testimony from a number of military pilots who had interacted with UFOs," he said. "Those reports were met with ridicule and the authorities refused to take him seriously."
A still from an unclassified video taken by US Navy pilots shows an encounter with 'unidentified aerial phenomena'. Photo: Handout / AFP alt=A still from an unclassified video taken by US Navy pilots shows an encounter with 'unidentified aerial phenomena'. Photo: Handout / AFP
Among the incidents that Sato documented was a sighting of a "flying saucer" at close range before the craft disappeared at a rapid speed, and an entire squadron of pilots on the ground at an airbase witnessing a series of highly reflective craft that were also moving at a speed beyond the capabilities of a conventional aircraft.
In another case, a squadron was scrambled to intercept an unidentified object but it quickly vanished.
Shigeru Ishiba, a former defence minister, has inquired about UFOs in the past, Sullivan said, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will also be aware of the activities of JCETI " the Japan branch of the California-based SETI Institute, which researches extraterrestrial intelligence " because his wife, Akie Abe, has attended events.
Japan appears to be something of a hotbed for UFO sightings, with a "flashing green orb" reported in the skies above Niigata in November 2016, and "10 white globes" floating above Osaka in July 2015 and "mystery lights" witnessed by dozens of people over Okinawa in January 2014.
In September 2009, Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of then-Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, attracted headlines over a book in which she claimed to have had an extraterrestrial experience 20 years before.
"While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus. It was a very beautiful place and it was really green," she wrote. Her husband reportedly told her that it was probably just a dream.
Sullivan said the Japanese public was interested in knowing more about UFOs, but "a filter has been applied to the information by the authorities that has effectively seen the issue relegated to cult status".
"People are hungry for information to be released, and in all the years that I have been travelling across Japan, I've heard a lot of people's UFO experiences," he said.
JCETI hosts two or three events each month, with people claiming to have had an encounter with an alien craft attending virtually every meeting and sharing their stories and photos.
"We've also got some amazing footage from our regular sky-watch events, with places such as Hokkaido, Okinawa and Tohoku " places that are far away from the big cities " proving to be the best hotspots," Sullivan said.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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