Last week, the government released a plan to evacuate the residents of the Sakishima archipelago, which comprises the outlying islands of Okinawa Prefecture, in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Since the U.S. has pledged to defend Taiwan against any such attack, Japan would be drawn into the conflict in accordance with the U.S.-Japan security agreement. Those Japanese islands geographically closest to Taiwan would likely be affected, so the government came up with a plan to move civilians from the region to mainland Japan.

Japanese media have reported these plans with an air of skepticism. Tokyo Shimbun‘s explanation, which appeared in its March 29 edition, included a comment that the scheme does not take into consideration the real situation surrounding the islands targeted for evacuation. 

The entire operation would endeavor to move about 120,000 people from the islands, including any tourists who happened to be present at the time, to 32 municipalities in 8 prefectures, 7 of which are on the island of Kyushu. The 55,000 residents of Miyako Island would be moved to 4 prefectures. Ishigaki’s 49,000 residents would go to 3 prefectures, including Yamaguchi on Honshu. The 4,000 people of Taketomi would be taken to Nakasaki; Yonaguni’s 1,600 people to Saga; and so on. All the evacuees would be flown to two airports, Kagoshima and Fukuoka, and from there bussed to the various municipalities that have been assigned to accept them. Some, such as those going to Yamaguchi, would use the Shinkansen part of the way. 

The government estimates that it would take 6 days to transport all 120,000 people, and they would be housed in hotels and other commercial accommodations for one month. In accordance with the Disaster Rescue Law, each evacuee would be allotted ¥7,000 a day for accommodations and meals. 

Tokyo Shimbun points out that accommodations are not assured. It’s assumed that if and when Taiwan were attacked, the operation would be sudden, meaning that evacuation would have to be carried out quickly, and it’s unlikely that all the rooms needed for evacuees would be available at the time, given that inbound tourism is still booming. Even more concerning is transportation. In the unlikely event that all evacuees are airlifted to the two airports within the time period prescribed, there would still be an acute shortage of bus drivers. When contacted by Tokyo Shimbun, bus companies admitted they had no idea of how such a plan could be carried out. 

A professor of “crisis studies” told the newspaper that “citizen protection policies” are usually done in a top-down manner, and it’s hugely unrealistic to expect that individual prefectures can secure the personnel and resources under such conditions. Moreover, the government hasn’t defined the precise circumstances that would trigger an evacuation. That sort of intelligence would be kept top secret, so how would they prepare the residents of Sakishima for evacuation? Without gaining the people’s understanding, any forced mobilization would be a violation of their human rights, says the professor. 

The government has also revealed that it intends to conduct a kind of dry run of the evacuation plan sometime before the end of 2026, which should be fun. During a discussion of the matter on the web news site Democracy Times, journalist Shigeru Handa, an expert on security issues, said that a fairly large portion of the potential evacuees have already said they don’t plan to participate in any drills or in any actual evacuation should fighting break out on Taiwan. They consider the plan to be not only ludicrous but pointless in the event of an actual invasion. 

Handa says the plan is even more ludicrous than it seems at first glance. It’s been on the books for about two years, thus implying that it was drafted rather quickly and then ignored without any follow-up study. The numbers of people who would need to be evacuated have been undercounted since they mostly consist of city dwellers on the islands and not rural residents (who would refuse to leave their cattle behind—something like 25,000 head are being raised througout the archipelago). The air evacuation of just the two larger islands would require 800 airplanes to move the stated number of people within the time limit envisioned, and there are not even 800 commercial airplanes operating in Japan. Even if there were, most of them would undoubtedly already be in use when the emergency was called. As already mentioned, it’s impossible to assure enough accommodations for all those people, but even worse, ¥7,000 would not cover anybody’s expenses since the average nightly hotel fee on Kyushu right now is ¥15,000, not including meals. 

But one of the biggest holes in the plan is that the evacuation does not include the biggest island in Okinawa Prefecture—Okinawa, which is home to 1.46 million people. Given the parameters, it would take 72 days to evacuate the island, so, in effect, the government is just ignoring these residents, thinking that maybe they would be out of harm’s way. 

But as Handa points out, if war breaks out on Taiwan and the U.S. gets involved, so will Japan, meaning all of Japan will be the target of the Chinese because of American bases and Japanese defense facilities that could be used to defend Taiwan. The Sakishima evacuation plan just shows how Japan has everything to lose in a conflict between Taiwan and China, and that the only way to avoid such involvement is simply to not get involved, and that would mean talking straight to the U.S., Taiwan, and China about regional security that would mitigate any violence. But apparently it’s easier to draw up unrealistic evacuation plans that make it look like the authorities are doing something. In any case, we look forward to seeing how well the 2026 drill goes.