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2013 March 6 - 12 TOP3 [POLITICS]

April 28 is anniversary when Japan’s sovereignty was restored: PM Abe

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s intention to commemorate April 28, the day the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect in 1952, has aroused anger among Okinawans.

At a House of Representatives budget committee meeting on March 7, the prime minister said that he wants to hold an official ceremony to commemorate April 28 as the day when “Japan restored its complete sovereignty.”

People in Okinawa, however, have called that very day “The Day of Humiliation” because the San Francisco Peace Treaty forcibly isolated their islands from mainland Japan and allowed the United States to keep its occupation force there.

With Article 3 of the treaty, the administrative rights of Okinawa, Amami, and Ogasawara Islands were given to the U.S. In Okinawa, U.S. forces continued to seize residents’ land by the joint use of “bayonets and bulldozers.”

The San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed only by the U.S. and western powers. China and Korea, which had suffered tremendous damage from Japan’s war of aggression, were not invited.

Its Article 6 stipulates the grounds for the U.S. forces to stay in Japan. The original Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, which came into effect on the same day, authorizes the U.S. forces to keep using bases it built in Japan during the occupation period. In other words, the two treaties enabled the U.S. to continue its occupation of Japan.

Prime Minister Abe’s aforementioned remark was made in response to Liberal Democratic Party member Noda Takeshi, who heads the LDP parliamentarians’ group calling for April 28 to be an anniversary to commemorate the “restoration of Japan’s sovereignty.” The group in 2011 submitted to the Diet a bill to designate the day as a national holiday.

Abe has stated that the Constitution and the Fundamental Law of Education “were created during the period when Japan did not have sovereignty” and that the country “was forced” to accept them under the occupation. It is clear that his intention to set the day to commemorate the “restoration of the country’s sovereignty” is to influence the public opinion to support constitutional revision.