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YOKOSUKA, Japan (AP) — A U.S. Navy strike group's flagship aircraft carrier left its Japanese home port on Thursday, wrapping up nearly nine years of deployment in the Indo-Pacific, where it served a key role in the U.S. effort to bolster defense ties with Japan and other partners in the region.
The departure of USS Ronald Reagan — one of America’s largest warships and a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class aircraft carrier — comes at a time of growing tension in the face of increasingly assertive China in the Indo-Pacific.
Family members and friends of the crew were on hand to wave the carrier off from Yokosuka Naval Base after its final patrolling mission earlier in the day.
Hundreds of sailors stood along the rails while others on the flight deck stood forming the Japanese saying “dewa mata,” or “see you." The carrier was accompanied by two guided-missile destroyers, USS Robert Smalls and USS Howard. It is scheduled to transit in Bremerton, Washington, later this year, before heading to a next home port assignment.
Speaking at the ceremony, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel ensured a “seamless transition.”
USS Ronald Reagan was the only American aircraft carrier deployed as a flagship of the Carrier Strike Group 5 under the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet, to a home port outside the U.S.
“The USS Ronald Reagan and her crew have ensured that millions of people across the Indo-Pacific have been able to live their lives free of coercion, aggression and suppression,” Emanuel later told reporters.
While tensions have escalated in the South China Sea between China and the Philippines and a number of other countries over maritime and territorial disputes, Japan is concerned about its dispute with China over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea.
Japanese and Chinese coast guard ships repeatedly face off in the waters there.
Former Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, who recently joined an environmental survey trip near the disputed Senkaku islands, which Beijing calls the Diaoyu, said Thursday that cooperation with the U.S. and other like-minded countries is key to defending the international order.
“We have a sense of urgency that we must not let the East China Sea become another South China Sea,” she said.
Landing on the islands is not permitted, so Inada's group flew drones for land and vegetation survey of the area. China protested the trip.
Inada said experts should be able to land on Japan's territory for research, calling for a parliamentary debate.
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Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo.
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Follow AP's Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific