Japan Press Weekly

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2011 October 26 - November 1 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

Business circle ignores objection and embarks on N-reactors

US strategy influence on Japan’s nuclear energy policy (Part 6)

In January 1955, after the United States government wrote to the Japanese government that it will assist Japan in constructing experimental reactors, Japan’s Ambassador to the United Nations Sawada Renzo conveyed to Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru a U.N. official’s concerns about Japan blindly following in the U.S. footsteps and being tied to the United States on the atomic energy issue.

Gunnar Randers, a personal advisor to the U.N. Secretary General, told the Japanese mission to the U.N. that it would not be wise for Japan to import nuclear reactors from the United States without acquiring its own technological ability.

Ambassador Sawada in his official telegram also advised Foreign Minister Shigemitsu to abide by the peaceful uses centered on the United Nations, not on the United States, in regard to atomic energy issue.

However, it was found that Japan’s big business circle rapidly increased its move to introduce atomic reactors under U.S. assistance after a U.S. written proposal to Japan on atomic reactors came to light. Asahi Shimbun of April 14, 1955 in a front page scoop revealed the U.S. proposal to supply the Japanese government with enriched uranium for use in experimental atomic reactors.

A month earlier, the Foreign Ministry considered publishing the U.S. proposal in a report and asked the U.S. Embassy in Japan for consent. The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo then sounded out the U.S. government’s position, as the embassy was concerned that the publication could provoke anti-nuclear energy scientists and the general public. The U.S. government replied to the embassy that it had no objection to the publication.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry’s final decision, however, was to not make the proposal public, surmising that the U.S. government actually sought caution and secrecy about the atomic issue.

After the revelation of the U.S. proposal on supplying Japan with enriched uranium, an advisory panel to the Cabinet, the investigative board on preparing the use of atomic energy, began discussing whether or not to receive the nuclear fuel.

At the board’s meeting on May 16, 1955, Tomonaga Shin’ichiro, a physics professor who was later awarded a Nobel Prize, said that Japan would make a wrong choice in the circumstances in which everything was uncertain in regard to if Japan should build both reactors for enriched uranium and heavy water reactors using natural uranium as Japan planned, and about who should accept these reactors and where.

However, his view was dismissed as representing the opinion of a minority. The government on May 20 decided to promptly begin negotiating with the United States over an agreement on atomic energy. A Japan-U.S. agreement on atomic energy research was initialed in June and was formally signed in November.

Since the announcement in December 1954 of the U.S. “atomic Marshall Plan” under which the U.S. business circle was going to export atomic reactors to Japan, the Japanese business circle had been enthusiastic about it.

After the U.S. proposal to Japan became public, corporate leaders led by the then Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) president Ishikawa Ichiro established a commission to deal with the peaceful uses of atomic energy and moved ahead to build nuclear reactors in Japan with U.S. support and guidance.

Shoriki Matsutaro, president of Nippon Television Network (NTV) Corporation and owner of The Yomiuri Shimbun (newspaper) played a major role as a mediator in establishing a pro-atomic reactor opinion in the big business circle.

(To be continued)