Japan Press Weekly

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2013 November 27 - December 3 [POLITICS]

Weather forecasts banned under wartime secrets law: ex-weather station worker

On December 8, 1941, the day the Imperial Japanese government launched the Pacific War (Japan time), weather forecasts on the radio abruptly disappeared as meteorological information was designated as military secrets. A former worker at a local weather station criticizes the government-sponsored state secrets bill as the return of the wartime Military Secrets Law.

Masuda Yoshinobu, 90, an ex-staff member at the Miyazu meteorological station in Kyoto Prefecture, went to his office on that day 72 years ago. When he was about to draw a weather map as usual after receiving weather information from the Central Meteorological Observatory, he found that the telegram was indecipherable.

The fact is, the telegram was encoded and the radio weather report was banned under the “meteorological blackout” starting that day.

“All the weather information was classified under the Military Secrets Law because it was critical to military operations. I felt a terrible pain in my heart when I could not answer my acquaintances’ questions about weather conditions for the next day,” Masuda said.

During the wartime, the authorities provided the general public with no information on the predicted paths of typhoons, rainstorm warnings, or even on damage caused by massive earthquakes and tsunamis.

The imperial government suppressed the damage information about the Tonankai Quake in December 1944 and the Mikawa Quake in January 1945. They gave no explanation to even the parents of those who were killed in the disasters, including students mobilized for labor service to support the war and schoolchildren evacuated to escape from air raids by the U.S. forces.

Radio weather reports recommenced on August 22,1945, soon after the end of World War II. Listening to the radio, many people came to fully realize that the war had ended.

“The purpose of the wartime secrets law and the currently-debated secrets protection bill is to protect the ‘state’, not the public. Weather forecasts are a symbol of peace. We have to work to scrap the bill in order to keep the peace,” he stressed.