Quotes of the Day

Helicopters, it turns out, do not fly upside down. I know this by hard, albeit simulated, experience. I was on the stick of an MH-53 helicopter, a 21-ton flying monster that is one of the largest craft of its type in the world, at the Iwakuni Air Base in western Japan. My co-pilot and instructor—an officer in the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF)—guided me as I lifted the copter off the ground and pointed it toward the Akinada Sea. A little spin over the water, no problem, and then my instructor asked me to turn around for home. I pulled left on the stick, and pulled, and pulled. The next thing I knew, I was staring up at the pixelated ground of Iwakuni that was probably supposed to be below, and then the screen went red, which I knew was a bad thing because my instructor said "Uh-oh." But not to worry—he hit reset (the advantage of video games) and gave me another shot. I showed my gratitude by immediately crashing the new helicopter into the runway.

If I had been flying a real helicopter, I would be dead and the government of Japan would be out $50 million, the cost of one its 10 MH-53 copters. They wouldn't miss me—and they might not miss the $50 million either. Though its constitution officially prohibits war and its army and navy are innocuously called the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), Japan is a stealth military power, with an annual budget of around $42 billion—the sixth largest in the world. Despite all that money, Japan's armed forces have traditionally kept a very low profile, at home and abroad. But that's changing. Over the past few years, Japanese forces have taken part in operations in Iraq and the Indian Ocean. Conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last month elevated Japan's Defense Agency to a full-fledged Cabinet-level ministry, and is aiming to change the country's pacifist constitution, which could open the door for more frequent deployments of the SDF abroad. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's Feb. 20-22 visit to Tokyo included talks on expanding coordination between American and Japanese forces. "For the past 50 years, Japan intentionally ignored the matter of defense," says Toshiyuki Shikata, a defense analyst at Teikyo University. But now, he adds, Japan is waking up to its own military power.

That change is slowly playing out at Iwakuni. The seaside MSDF facility not far from Hiroshima was a main Japanese air force base through World War II, before it was eventually taken over by the Americans, and the grounds are now shared with the U.S. Marines. It's in the midst of a $1.9 billion expansion program, paid for by the Japanese government, and its contingent of U.S. planes will eventually double to over 100 as part of a global realignment of American forces. There's a reason for the move—Iwakuni is within striking distance of every potential hot spot in Northeast Asia, from Beijing to Pyongyang to Taipei. As he gives a group of foreign journalists a briefing on Iwakuni, Satoru Shoji, an MSDF captain with the blunt build and cauliflower ears of a rugby player, points toward the area west of Japan on a map and says, "This is the area we have to watch out for." There isn't any doubt about which countries he's referring to: North Korea and China.

The specter of a rearming and aggressive Japan gives the rest of Asia flashbacks to the war, but the truth is that Iwakuni, like all Japanese military facilities, is still far more defensive than offensive. While missile-armed F/A-18 Hornets launch daily from the American side of the base, Japan's hangars are filled with support craft like the MH-53, which sweeps for mines, and the US-1A, a giant propeller-powered flying boat used for sea rescues. The division of labor is obvious at Iwakuni in other ways. The U.S. keeps nearly half of the base to itself. But the two countries are slowly moving toward greater cooperation, though the process hits the occasional political hiccup. Despite the emphasis on security policy during his trip, Cheney pointedly did not meet with Japanese Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma—perhaps because Kyuma said last month that the Iraq invasion, which Tokyo officially supported, was a "mistake." Still, as the country's politics—and politicians—mature to allow a more assertive foreign policy, Japan may not remain a stealth military power for long.

• Bryan Walsh/Iwakuni