JCP chair issues statement on govt report regarding Japan-U.S. secret pacts on nuclear weapons

Japan Press Weekly

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JCP chair issues statement on govt report regarding Japan-U.S. secret pacts on nuclear weapons

Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo on March 9 issued the following statement in regard to a government panel’s report on its research of Japan-U.S. secret pacts on nuclear weapons:

1. The Foreign Ministry’s expert panel on March 9 published a report on secret pacts on nuclear weapons between the Japanese and U.S. governments. The investigation of the secret agreements was pledged to be carried out by the ruling Democratic Party of Japan during the House of Representatives general election last August. As the political party which has made consistent efforts to expose this issue, the Japanese Communist Party expressed that it will cooperate with the investigation at a party head meeting with the DPJ on September 10 last year and submitted to the government the related documents it had obtained over the years. The published report contains serious problems in its recognition of the bilateral secret agreements on nuclear weapons.

2. The secret pacts allow U.S. vessels and planes carrying nuclear weapons to enter Japanese territory without prior consultation, which the two governments are required to conduct under Article 6 of the bilateral Security Treaty. At the 2000 Diet deliberations, then JCP Chair Fuwa Tetsuzo revealed the existence of the secret arrangements on nuclear weapons by showing the “Record of Discussion” which had been concluded between the two governments during the process of revising the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty.

The government panel’s report, while acknowledging the existence of the “Record of Discussion” fails to recognize it as a secret agreement. It states, “It is difficult to acknowledge Clause 2 of the second section of the record as evidence of a Japan-U.S. ‘secret agreement’ to exclude port calls of U.S. vessels carrying nuclear weapons from the subjects of prior consultation,” and, “There has been no clear agreements reached between Japan and the U.S. that determined whether or not port calls of warships carrying nuclear weapons are subject to prior consultation.”

3. This argument is totally unreasonable.

(a) The “Record of Discussion,” in Clause A of the second section, states that “the introduction into Japan of nuclear weapons” as well as “the construction of bases for such weapons” would be the subjects of prior consultation. Then Clause C of the same section states, “‘Prior consultation’ will not be interpreted as affecting present procedures” for “the entry of United States military aircraft and the entry into Japanese waters and ports by Unites States naval vessels.” This means that by maintaining the “present procedures,” Japan has been required to continuously allow the U.S. to bring nuclear weapons into Japan’s territory.

(b) Considering how the “Record of Discussion” was treated between the two governments, it is clear that this was an official document and constitutes part of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty.

On January 6, 1960, Japanese Foreign Minister Fujiyama Aiichiro and U.S. Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II initialed and exchanged two English originals of the “Record of Discussion.” According to the telegram sent by MacArthur to Secretary of State Christian A. Herter on the same day, after initialing the two originals, those two officials confirmed to designate them as well as their copies as confidential.

Ambassador MacArthur, in his telegram sent to the Secretary of State on January 7, included the “Record of Discussion” in “documents comprising treaty package.” His telegram on January 9 included it in 17 items of the “total list of treaty documents.”

(c) After discussing with Foreign Minister Ohira Masayoshi the “Record of Discussion” on April 4 1963, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reishauer in his report to the U.S. government stated, “I arrived at full mutual understanding with him (Ohira) regarding interpretation of classified ‘Record of Discussion’ entirely on lines of existing U.S. interpretation.”

The government panel’s report claimed that the Japanese and the U.S. governments differed in their interpretation of the “Record of Discussion” and that there was no clear agreement between them. This claim, however, is invalid.

The report denied the existence of secret agreements on the bringing-in of nuclear weapons to Japan while acknowledging the existence of the “Record of Discussion”.

4. Although the report refuses to accept that the secret pacts allowed the U.S. to bring nuclear weapons into Japan, it states that the Japanese government tacitly permitted U.S. warships carrying nuclear weapons to enter Japanese ports without prior consultation. The report recognizes that the Three Non-Nuclear Principles confirmed by successive governments as a national policy were violated and emasculated.

If U.S. warships carrying nuclear weapons had visited Japanese ports without prior consultation with no secret agreement on nuclear weapons, it would have meant that the U.S. continued smuggling these weapons into Japan and that successive Japanese governments turned a blind eye to such U.S. lawless activities. What measures the government will take to address this issue and to prevent further illegal actions are now called into question.

5. The issue of the bringing-in of nuclear weapons to Japan is not just a past issue because although the U.S. government decided to eliminate nuclear weapons from all surface vessels, it still maintains the policy of loading tomahawk land attack cruise missiles onto nuclear-powered attack submarines at anytime if necessary. In addition, the U.S. government has asserted that nuclear weapons will be redeployed whenever it declares an emergency. Under the “Japan-U.S. secret agreements,” the bringing-in of nuclear weapons to Japan will still be allowed.

As long as the report admits that the “Record of Discussion” existed, the government must admit that the “Record of Discussion” is a secret agreement, abolish it, implement the Three Non-Nuclear Principles in a strict manner, and take effective measures to establish a nuclear free-Japan.

- Akahata, March 10, 2010