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2024 February 28 - March 5 TOP3 [POLITICS]

Gov’t keeps hidden documentation of deal with US over release of Japanese war criminals in exchange for settlement of US H-bomb test incident

The Japanese government has been concealing a document showing that Japan had made a deal with the United States for the release of Japanese war criminals in exchange for the settlement of the 1954 Bikini Incident.

Takahashi Hiroko, a professor at Nara University, made public this fact at a symposium held in Shizuoka City (Shizuoka Pref.) on February 28.

She obtained the document that the U.S. government had released in response to her information disclosure request. However, the copy of the document in Japan has disappeared, according to her.

The document in question relates to a meeting between U.S. Ambassador to Japan John M. Allison and Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru, dealing with the damage caused by U.S. H-bomb tests at the Bikini Atoll in 1954.

The document describes the release of Japanese war criminals and the settlement of the Bikini Incident where many Japanese fishing boats were showered with radioactive fallout in the Pacific Ocean.

Takahashi said, “The Japanese government should disclose the document it has been hiding.”

According to other disclosed materials she obtained, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the U.S. military investigated radioactive fallout from atomic and hydrogen bomb experiments.

The materials show that they collected and analyzed human tissues and bones without the bereaved families’ consent in a project called “Sunshine”, which studied the global dispersion of strontium 90, and quantified the impact of radioactive fallout on the world’s population.

The materials also show that they applied a map illustrating the extent of radioactive fallout from 1954 H-bomb tests in the Marshall Islands to Washington, D.C. in order to run simulations for a nuclear war.

The materials reveal that the result of surveys on Marshall islanders’ exposure to radiation was kept a military secret.

She also obtained a document which describes that Merrill Eisenbud, director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s New York Operations Office, said, “It will be very interesting to get a measure of human uptake when people live in a contaminated environment.”