TOKYO — Japan’s navy recovered two our bodies of the ten crew members on a military helicopter that sunk to the underside of the ocean after presumably crashing off a southern Japanese island 11 days in the past.

On Monday, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force confirmed the deaths of two male crew members recovered by particular divers from the 100-meter (330-foot) -deep seabed the place they had been discovered with the wreckage and three different crew members. The different 5 crew members on board on the time of the crash are nonetheless lacking.

The UH-60JA Black Hawk helicopter disappeared April 6 quickly after taking off from a military base on Miyako Island for a reconnaissance mission in Japan’s southern islands.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday expressed his “deepest regret” over the deaths Monday and pledged to do the utmost for the restoration of the remainder of the crew members “so that those who devoted their lives for the defense of the country can go back to their families as soon as possible, while we pursue our effort to find the cause of the accident.”

Officials are finding out methods to carry the plane to seek out the reason for the crash.

An unused lifeboat, a door, and different fragments believed to be from the helicopter had been discovered however the military has had hassle finding the plane within the space’s coral-rich deep sea.

Japan is aggressively increase its protection functionality in its southwestern islands in response to China’s more and more assertive navy exercise within the area, together with close to Taiwan.

The helicopter was stationed at a key military base in Kumamoto prefecture on Japan’s southern predominant island of Kyushu, based on the Defense Ministry. One of its 10 crew members was Lt. Gen. Yuichi Sakamoto, who was simply promoted to division commander on the finish of March.

The military mentioned the helicopter had a routine security inspection in late March. No abnormality was discovered throughout its subsequent check flight nor on its journey from its residence base of Kumamoto to the Miyako island, about 1,800 kilometers (1,120 miles) southwest of Tokyo.

Japan began deploying the Black Hawk, a twin-engine, four-bladed utility helicopter developed by U.S. producer Sikorsky Aircraft and produced by the Mitsubishi Heavy Industry, in 1999 for speedy response, surveillance and catastrophe aid missions.

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