The United States pledged support for ally Japan on Wednesday in an escalating dispute with China over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, with top U.S. officials saying China's claim to airspace over the islands had unnerved its neighbors. U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told his Japanese counterpart Itsunori Onodera in a telephone call that the two countries' defense treaty covers the small island group where China claimed a new airspace defense zone last week, and he "commended the Japanese government for exercising appropriate restraint," the Pentagon said in a statement.
