Despite a raging territorial dispute with China, the Japanese government has been leasing one of five disputed islands in the East China Sea for more than three decades, a Japanese official said yesterday.
"We are leasing the island as a possible military exercise ground for American troops," a spokesman with the Defense Facilities Administration Agency said.
The Japanese government started leasing Kuba island in May 1972, when Washington returned the southern prefecture of Okinawa to Japan.
At that time the territory belonged to a Japanese family, the Kuriharas, who also owned three other islets in the disputed chain, which is claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan.
The fifth island, Sekibi, is owned by the finance ministry.
After the original contract for Kuba island expired in 1992 another was signed, which could be extended as long as 20 years, the official said.
The US military has not used the island since May 1978. "But we are keeping it available for them," he added.
The revelation came after Japan on Monday rejected a formal Chinese protest against moves to lease three of the other islands in the chain, known as Senkaku in Japanese and Tiaoyu in Chinese.
Beijing also blasted as "invalid" Japan's leasing of the fourth isle.
"The Tiaoyu Island and its adjacent islets have been a part of Chinese territory since ancient times. Any unilateral action taken by the Japanese side on these islets is invalid," the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement.
China has already formally protested Japanese moves to lease the three other islands -- Uotsuri, Minami-Ko and Kita-Ko.
Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a press release yesterday reiterated that the chain belonged to Taiwan after confirming that Japan has already leased the three islands.
But Tokyo insists both history and international law were clear in that the five Senkaku islands are an integral part of Japanese territory.
The rent for uninhabited Kuba has been paid from the Defense Facilities Administration Agency's budget, the agency spokesman said.
The Kurihara family still owned Minami-Ko and Kita-Ko islands, but it was unclear who Uotsuri and Kuba now belonged to.
Japan declared the islands its territory in 1895 and they were temporarily put under US control after World War II. But they were returned to Japanese rule in 1972.
The hot territorial dispute came to the fore in the early 1970s, when China and Taiwan made their claims to the islands after oil deposits were confirmed in the area by a UN agency.
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