Japan Press Weekly

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2009 September 21 - 29 [POLITICS]

Probe into secret nuclear pacts must expose dark side of Japan-U.S. Security Treaty -- Akahata editorial (excerpts)

The investigation is to be carried out under the order of Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya based on the national administrative organization law. The probe should cover four items: a secret agreement on bringing nuclear weapons into Japan at the time of the 1960 revision of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty; a secret agreement over combat operations in an emergency in the Korean Peninsula; a secret agreement on bringing nuclear weapons into Japan at the 1972 return of the administrative rights over Okinawa; and a secret agreement on Japan shouldering the compensatory cost for restoring Okinawa to its original condition before occupation.

A secret agreement on nuclear weapons is what Foreign Minister Fujiyama Aiichiro and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Douglas MacArthur II agreed on six months in advance in June 1959 and signed on January 6, 1960 when the Security Treaty was revised. Given the title “Record of Discussion”, in substance it was a secret agreement between the Japanese and U.S. governments.

The Record of Discussion states that the “entry into Japanese waters and ports” of U.S. military aircraft and U.S. naval vessels with nuclear weapons “will not be interpreted as affecting the present procedures”. The “present procedures” mean the arrangements based on the expiring Security Treaty. “Will not be affecting” actually means that no changes shall be made to the arrangement under the old Security Treaty which allowed the United States to freely bring nuclear weapons into Japan.

The Record of Discussion is not just a record but a written agreement guaranteeing the free coming in and out of Japan of military craft laden with nuclear weapons under the revised Security Treaty, just like under the old treaty. It means Japan accepted nuclear weapons to be brought in, which is unconscionable in the light of the three non-nuclear principles of not producing, possessing, or allowing nuclear weapons to be brought in, which the government upholds as a national policy.

The past governments and the foreign ministry have denied the existence of secret agreements because they had to conceal the criminal acts of the Liberal Democratic Party governments in concluding such secret pacts. The foreign ministry should examine its responsibility of having deceived the public for such a long time, and should now reveal all the secret agreements.

For Japan to get out from under the U.S. “nuclear umbrella” and turn into a “nuclear-free Japan” in name and in reality, it is essential for the government to renounce the secret agreements on nuclear weapons. It is necessary to correct the distorted Japan-U.S. relations shouldered in secrecy.
- Akahata, September 28, 2009