Akasaka Press Center (also known as Hardy Barracks and Azabu Heliport) is a facility of the United States Army, Japan located in the

Roppongi Roppongi (, , 'six trees') is a district of Minato, Tokyo, Minato, Tokyo, Japan, famous for the affluent Roppongi Hills development area and popular night club scene. A few foreign embassies are located near Roppongi, and the night life is popu ...

area of

Minato, Tokyo is a Special wards of Tokyo, special ward of Tokyo, Japan. It is also called Minato City in English. Minato was formed in 1947 as a merger of Akasaka, Tokyo, Akasaka, Azabu and Shiba, Tokyo, Shiba wards following Tokyo City's Local Autonomy Ac ...

. The facility occupies 3.1 hectares of land in central Tokyo. It houses the Tokyo offices of '' Stars and Stripes'', the Tokyo division of the

Office of Naval Research The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is an organization within the United States Department of the Navy responsible for the science and technology programs of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Established by Congress in 1946, its mission is to plan ...

, and the Hardy Barracks, an accommodation facility for military personnel. The base also houses a

helipad A helipad is the landing area of a heliport, in use by helicopters, powered lift, and vertical lift aircraft to land on surface. While helicopters and powered lift aircraft are able to operate on a variety of relatively flat surfaces, a fa ...

and gasoline pump. The United States Army has officially stated that the helipad is meant to be used during emergency situations in Tokyo, while the mayor of Minato City has stated that "we have been told in response to inquiries that the details of how the base is used cannot be released publicly." The heliport is periodically used by civilian helicopters for official purposes such as medical evacuation of patients from the

Ogasawara Islands The Bonin Islands, also known as the , is a Japanese archipelago of over 30 subtropical and tropical islands located around SSE of Tokyo and northwest of Guam. The group as a whole has a total area of but only two of the islands are permanen ...

under a 2008 agreement between the US military and Tokyo metropolitan government.

Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Michael Jackson, one of the most culturally significan ...

boarded a Black Hawk helicopter from the site in March 2007. The site was previously the base of the 3rd Infantry Regiment, 1st Division,

Imperial Japanese Army The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...

, one of the units involved in the February 26 Incident of 1936. The unit was sent to

Manchuria Manchuria is a historical region in northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day northeast China and parts of the modern-day Russian Far East south of the Uda (Khabarovsk Krai), Uda River and the Tukuringra-Dzhagdy Ranges. The exact ...

later that year, and the site then housed units of the

Imperial Guard An imperial guard or palace guard is a special group of troops (or a member thereof) of an empire, typically closely associated directly with the emperor and/or empress. Usually these troops embody a more elite status than other imperial force ...

through the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. The United States military took over the entire site in 1945. A large portion of the facility was returned to Japan in 1962 and used by the

University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

Institute of Industrial Science until 2001; this area is now occupied by

The National Art Center, Tokyo (NACT) is a museum in Roppongi, Minato, Tokyo, Japan. A joint project of the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the National Museums Independent Administrative Institution, it stands on a site formerly occupied by a research facility of the Univers ...

and the

National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies The , or GRIPS, is a public research graduate school located in Minato, Tokyo. Funded by the Japanese government, it is the second smallest by enrollment of all the List of national universities in Japan, national universities in Japan. It is cons ...

. There has been organized local opposition to the facility since 1967, and both the Tokyo metropolitan assembly and Minato municipal assembly have unanimously resolved to request that the facility be removed. The facility is located near other US government installations in central Tokyo including the

United States Embassy The United States has the second largest number of active diplomatic posts of any country in the world after the People's Republic of China, including 272 bilateral posts (embassies and consulates) in 174 countries, as well as 11 permanent miss ...

(2.5 km to the northeast) and the New Sanno Hotel (2.2 km to the south).

Gallery

File:USFJ Akasaka Press Center.JPG, Main building File:US-Army-Akasaka-Press-Center-02.jpg, Main entrance viewed from street File:U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel waves to the pilots of a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter after landing at Hardy Barracks in Tokyo, April 5, 2014 140405-D-BW835-161.jpg, U.S. Defense Secretary

Chuck Hagel Charles Timothy Hagel ( ; born October 4, 1946)UH-60 Black Hawk The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk is a four-blade, twin-engine, medium-lift military utility helicopter manufactured by Sikorsky Aircraft. Sikorsky submitted a design for the United States Army's Utility Tactical Transport Aircraft System (UTTAS) ...

, 2014 File:US-Army-Akasaka-Press-Center-03.jpg, Hardy Barracks building viewed from street

References

{{authority control Heliports in Japan Installations of the U.S. Department of Defense in Japan Military facilities in Tokyo