Did former President Trump set up a U.S. Space Force military branch headquarters in the Yokota Airbase in Japan? No, that's not true: The Space Force, headquartered in Colorado Springs in the US, has personnel stationed at bases and stations on the US mainland, Hawaii and Greenland. While the joint US and Japanese airbase at Yokota, near Tokyo, has recently assisted operations between the Space Force and Japan's space program, it does not operate a full-time presence or headquarters at the base, and the claim presents information from a Japanese military news site out of context.
The claim appeared on TikTok (archived here) on September 11, 2023. The video opens with a caption that reads:
Did you know that Trump's Space Force was installed at the Yokota base?
The video points to an article in Milirepo, a Japanese military news site, as evidence that a Japanese Self-Defense Force underground bunker is linked to the US Space Force's Cheyenne Mountain complex which is home to the Space Force command and the North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) Cheyenne Mountain Complex:
There's an "underground command post" located in the Japanese Ministry of Defense's called basement 3. Among them [bases], it is said that the Space Force's "Cheyenne Mountain Base" is considered the strongest military base.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Sep 15 01:24:01 2023 UTC)
The Space Force is represented at the Pentagon like other branches of the US military and it maintains a command headquarters located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. According to its website, it operates from six bases, all on the U.S. mainland, and according to space.com it operates eight Space Force stations, including six on the U.S. mainland, one in Hawaii, and one in Greenland.
Yokota Air Base, located near Japan's capital Tokyo, is the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Air Force a forward element of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces and home of the 374th Airlift Wing, a unit that serves military airlift requirements in the East Asia region. It also serves as a base for Japan's Air Self-Defense Force and a coordination center for joint air operations including those that may be requested by the US Space Force and Japan's space program. For example, it recently assisted in transporting U.S.-made satellite sensors to be launched on Japanese satellites.
