Daily activity logs compiled by Japanese troops deployed to South Sudan as UN peacekeeping troops have been discarded, according to Japanese media.
Japan’s Defense Ministry officials said on Saturday that it was hard to examine some of their activities, including those around the time of a large-scale clash in the world’s youngest nation in July.
The logs compiled by members of the Ground Self-Defense Force in South Sudan were discarded entirely, including in digital form, because they “ended their useful purpose,” an official of the ministry’s Joint Staff said, adding that information in the logs has been relayed to superiors.
Internal ministry rules stipulate that records related to UN peacekeeping operations must be stored for three years, but those which “arise on an unscheduled basis and end their purposes within a short period time” can be discarded, a senior ministry official said.
The official of the Joint Staff said information in the discarded daily activity logs has been reflected in documents compiled for newly arriving troops to some extent.
Japan began sending members of the Self-Defense Forces to South Sudan in November 2011. The GSDF civil engineering corps has been deployed in the capital Juba since January 2012.