TOKYO: The Air Self-Defense Force’s Blue Impulse aerobatic team will fly over the earthquake-hit Noto Peninsula in central Japan on March 17 to cheer up residents and aid workers, the Defense Ministry said Friday.

For the flight, slated for between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., six Blue Impulse planes will leave the ASDF’s Komatsu base in Ishikawa Prefecture to fly clockwise around the peninsula in Ishikawa, which was hit by the Jan. 1 temblor.

They will make circles over the heavily damaged cities of Wajima, Suzu and Nanao.

If the aerobatic team is unable to fly on March 17 for reasons such as bad weather, the flight will be put off to March 18 or 19.

On March 16, the ASDF will fly the Blue Impulse to mark the opening of Hokuriku Shinkansen bullet train services between Kanazawa, the capital of Ishikawa, and Tsuruga in neighboring Fukui Prefecture.

“We hope the (Noto) flight will give courage and hope to affected people and those involved in reconstruction and therefore can contribute to the reconstruction,” Defense Minister Minoru Kihara told a press conference.

In August 2011, the Blue Impulse flew from the ASDF’s Chitose base in the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido to the Matsushima base, the team’s home in the northeastern prefecture of Miyagi, hit by tsunami that followed the March 2011 quake.

The team flew over the southwestern city of Kumamoto in April 2017 in an event for reconstruction from powerful quakes the preceding year and over Tokyo in May 2020 to show gratitude to medical workers amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

JIJI Press