‘Bullying’ in the SDF: Court rules that superior’s insults caused sailor’s suicide

In the old Imperial Navy, it was not uncommon for sailors to be beaten by their superiors as a form of discipline. In today’s Maritime Self-Defense Forces, corporal punishment is out of the question. But what about the use of harsh words to discipline sailors?

The Fukuoka High Court ruled yesterday that the government must pay damages to the family of a sailor that committed suicide after being harshly reprimanded by a superior:

Squashing a lower court decision that rejected the parents’ suit, Presiding Judge Koji Maki ruled that the 21-year-old male petty officer third class “killed himself as a result of depression, which was caused by stress from the superior’s insulting remarks and actions.”

“The superior’s actions were intended to defame the officer and led to the excessive accumulation of psychological burdens on him,” Maki said. “It was beyond something that can be called an instruction.”

According to the ruling, the superior repeatedly made such comments to the officer as, “You are not qualified as a petty officer third class,” or, “Are you dumb?” since late August 1999 until he hanged himself in the destroyer Sawagiri, based at the MSDF’s Sasebo base in Nagasaki Prefecture, during drills off Shikoku on Nov. 8 that year.

The parents had demanded the state pay 20 million yen in damages to them.

Commending the ruling, Ryuji Nishida, who heads the defense counsel for the plaintiffs, said, “It is the first court ruling that recognizes the state’s violation of its obligation of ensuring security for national public servants over their psychological burdens.”

Dare I say that the government is right in insisting that the superior’s actions were within the legal bounds of military instruction? Shouldn’t members of a country’s armed forces, which are expected to face hardship in time of war, be able to endure the psychological burden of being harshly rebuked by an superior when they fail to perform tasks?

The news reports reminded me of a passage from Uneasy Warriors, a book about the psychological and social workings of the Self-Defense Forces:

One major described such a combined exercise as a culture shock: “I knew instantly that I had a real (honomono) military in front of my eyes. American soldiers run from morning to evening, because they think that the basic ability to fight lies in a strong body. You hardly ever see Self-Defense Forces service members run.” This major also discerned a different sense of safety among Japanese and American military personnel. During combined exercises in which he had participated, he recalled how two American soldiers wanted to give up because of the cold. “We would have told them to get inside to get warm,” he said, but there “is no sense of sympathy among American commanders.” Even if these two soldiers would have suffered permanent effects from being out in the cold for too long, he was sure that letting them warm up inside would have been considered a greater potential damage to the morale of the American troops. “In the Self-Defense Forces, where safety is a primary concern(anzen dai’ichi no Jieitai),” he emphasized, “this is unthinkable.”

I guess these problems are inevitable when a country has an army and navy that aren’t legally an army and navy – its members are treated primarily as government workers, and not soldiers and sailors.