TOKYO -- Japan is considering operating a joint exercise area with the U.S. Army in Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the western Pacific Ocean, to enhance reciprocity between the two countries and strengthen their long-standing bilateral military alliance.
Itsunori Onodoera, a former Japanese defense minister who now chairs the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council, revealed the plan on Saturday while speaking as a panelist at the Mount Fuji Dialogue in Tokyo, an annual gathering of political and business leaders from Japan and the U.S. hosted by the Japan Center for Economic Research and the Japan Institute of International Affairs.
