A senior academic, Prof Hitoshi Kawano, from Japan’s National Defense Academy, which trains all Japanese military officers, recently visited Veterans Aid to help understand issues facing Veterans in Japan.

Veterans Aid has further extended its international academic links to include Japan following a visit to the charity by Professor Hitoshi Kawano from Yokosuka.

Professor Kawano, a military sociologist at the Japanese National Defense Academy, is engaged in a comparative study of mental health issues among veterans of overseas operations - in Japan, the United States and the UK. He is also involved in a separate research project on veterans associations.

“Two years ago at a conference in Japan it was revealed that there had been a number of suicides among veterans. No-one knew how big the problem was – it could have been just the tip of an iceberg” he told CEO of Veterans Aid, Dr Hugh Milroy.

The two men explored both common and unfamiliar ground over the two-day visit, initiated by a recommendation from King’s College. “I have known Professor Christopher Dandeker there for 20 years,” said Prof Kawano. “I only had a limited amount of time in London and he suggested that I come to Veterans Aid and Dr Milroy for help with my researches.”

Dr Milroy, a former RAF officer, is a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College Department of War Studies and architect of the ‘welfare to wellbeing’ model practised at Veterans Aid.

After his visit to VA’s Victoria HQ Prof Kawano said “First of all I’m surprised by what you are doing here – it is quite innovative and different. It is also a very effective way of doing things. The help is very practical.”

“Information is very limited on these subjects in Japan and there is no evidence that the suicides reported had any connection to service in Iraq. However, a friend who is a social anthropologist spoke to a number of wives of service veterans and found that some (of their husbands) were experiencing mental health issues.

“If I can make a difference for those in need, by making more information available to those trying to help, whether organisations or unit commanders, that would be good, but I am the only military sociologist at the Defense Academy” he explained.

‘Veterans’ do not feature significantly as a group, and PTSD is not officially recognised, in Japan whose troops are constitutionally restricted to roles that limit their rules of engagement to ‘defence’. The SDF’s (Self Defence Force) deployment to Iraq, alongside Dutch troops, formed part of an earlier study undertaken by Prof Kawano and prompted his interest in further research.

Like the UK, Japan has no Department of Veterans Affairs or Veterans Charter; unlike the UK it has very few veterans charities and support for those experiencing mental health problems is provided largely by an NGO whose mobile unit of ‘veterans helping veterans’ operates an outreach programme. “They are working with SDF units,” said Prof Kawano, “but it’s still experimental.”

There are no available statistics on numbers of homeless veterans in Japan or those experiencing other post-discharge problems, but there are many socio-economic parallels with the UK.

Dr Milroy who, with Georgia University’s Professor Jay Mancini, recently presented a paper on social exclusion to academics at University College, Dublin, said “I was delighted to welcome Prof Kawano whose conclusions about mental health and resilience in the veteran community mirror many of our own. These are clearly fascinating times for the military community all over the world. Only this morning I was dealing with the Canadian Government who are asking me to advise them and academic researchers on Veteran matters. As for Prof Kawano, I look forward to further co-operation with him and the Japanese National Defense Academy in exploring these important issues.”