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Iraq leads to army suicides
10/03/2006 16:25 - (SA)
Tokyo - Four Japanese soldiers have killed themselves since returning from Iraq due to trauma, said a report on Friday.
A Defence Agency spokesperson confirmed the four deaths, but said it was "difficult to identify the reasons for their suicides".
However, the Asahi Shimbun said that a number of Japanese troops were emotionally scarred by their experience in Iraq - Tokyo's first mission since World War II to a country, where fighting was under way.
The reports said that one who killed himself last year was posted at a station attacked by rockets several times and a member of his unit was almost shot by accident by a United States soldier.
'We will be killed'
According to the report, during a joint military training with the US after he left Iraq, the upset officer had said of the American troops, "We will be killed if we are with them".
Japan had 600 troops in the relatively safe southern town of Samawa.
The troops on the reconstruction mission had suffered no casualties and not even fired their weapons. They were barred from combat by Japan's US-imposed 1947 pacifist constitution.
The Defence Agency said its doctors took care of soldiers' mental health before, during and after Iraq assignments.
With rotations, a total of 5 000 Japanese troops had done duty in Iraq since 2004.
A record high 94 members of Japan's 240 000-strong military, known as the Self-Defence Forces, killed themselves in the year to March 2005. Eighty-five had committed suicide in 11 months since then.
- AFP
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