Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda urged Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba Oct. 23 to get to the bottom of a series of scandals involving the Defense Ministry, punish those who were involved and take effective preventive measures.

Former Vice Defense Minister Takemasa Moriya. KYODO PHOTO

At a news conference, Ishiba quoted Fukuda as saying, "It is deplorable that there is no end of problems that have undermined public trust in the Defense Ministry and the Self-Defense Forces."

Fukuda apparently referred to the mishandling of information about the amount of oil Japan provided to the United States in a 2003 refueling mission in the Indian Ocean, the discarding of a logbook of the Maritime Self-Defense Force supply ship engaged in the mission and cozy ties between former Vice Defense Minister Takemasa Moriya and a former executive of defense equipment trading house Yamada Corp.

Ishiba said Moriya has admitted to having played golf with the ex-Yamada executive even after such associations were prohibited under an intraministry rule in April 2000.

Moriya, who held the ministry's top bureaucratic post from 2003 until September, told interrogators that he continued playing golf with the businessman until last fall, Ishiba said.

Ishiba called on Moriya to voluntarily return his retirement allowance to take responsibility for the whole episode. Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura made a similar call at a separate news conference.

Ishiba quoted Moriya as saying he could not stop playing golf with the former executive, although he considered it inappropriate, as they have been friends for some 20 years.