Japan to allow female sailors to serve aboard destroyers

The Defense Ministry decided Monday to allow female members of the Maritime Self-Defense Force to serve aboard destroyers from fiscal 2009, lifting a restriction that had been in place since the force’s establishment in 1954, ministry officials said. The MSDF hopes the decision, which will also apply to minesweeper tenders and antisubmarine helicopters in the fiscal year starting April 2009, will help alleviate the chronic personnel shortages that most units of the force face, the officials said.

The MSDF has some 45,000 members, 2,000 of whom are women, the officials said. Details of the measure have yet to be decided, but the ministry envisages an unspecified number of female MSDF members will serve aboard the new destroyer Hyuga, which will be commissioned next spring, they said. The Hyuga has separate quarters for women.