Pilot Rescued After US Fighter Jet Crashed Off Japan

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A U.S. F-15 fighter jet crashed into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, and the lone pilot was rescued by a Japanese helicopter.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that the government had received information about the U.S. military plane plunging into waters east of the southern Japanese island of Okinawa around 09:00 a.m. on Tuesday, the Kyodo news agency reported.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force said in a statement that an unspecified problem forced the pilot to eject in mid-flight safely. It quoted the Japanese Coast Guard as saying that a Japanese Self Defense Force helicopter rescued the pilot, who was floating in the ocean on a life raft.

The ill-fated fighter jet was on a training mission along with three other F-15s over the U.S. Air Force's Kadena base on the Okinawa prefecture.

The U.S. Forces, Japan did not disclose the identity of the pilot, but said the accident was under investigation.

Japan's key security ally since the end of World War II, the United States currently has about 47,000 troops in that country, more than half of them based in the Okinawa prefecture, a chain of small subtropical islands about 1,600 kilometers south-west of Tokyo.

Okinawans have long been critical of the U.S. military presence on their island and crimes committed by U.S. troops there, including the rape of a school-girl in 1995.

The United States and Japan last month outlined a new time frame for relocating the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station in the Okinawa prefecture, thereby reducing U.S. forces' footprint on the heavily populated Japanese island.

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