Secret US-Japanese nuclear pact revealed


This video says about itself:

Japans natural aversion to nuclear weapons didnt stop its then Prime Minister, Eisaku Sato, in 1965 from asking the U.S. to be prepared to launch a nuclear strike at communist China, if a major military conflict erupted. Declassification of the nuclear files which state that according to a secret agreement the U.S. will protect Japan with its nuclear arsenal in case of a military conflict with China foul security and economic relations in the Pacific region, says political analyst Maksim Bratersky.

From ddinews in India:

Sunday 22 November, 2009.

Japan to admit secret nuclear pact with US: reports

A Japanese government team has found documents on an alleged secret pact with the United States to transport nuclear weapons through its territory, after decades of official denial, reports revealed on Sunday.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s centre-left government launched a probe into the alleged nuclear pact and other secret agreements with the United States days after it took office in September.

The probe team reported to Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada on Friday that it had discovered documents linked to the pact from among thousands of files at the foreign ministry, the Mainichi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun newspapers reported, citing unnamed ministry sources.

“Foreign minister admits ‘nuclear secret pact'” declared the headline in the Mainichi Shimbun, while the Yomiuri Shimbun echoed: “Government view likely to change — ‘nuclear secret pact’.”

The existence of the agreement has been denied for decades by previous conservative administrations, even though US documents declassified last month showed US officials believed they had an understanding with Japan when the allies signed a new security treaty in 1960.

“The question of black or white will become clear in January. We will clear the burden of previous administrations which had insisted there was no secret pact,” Okada said on Saturday, the newspapers reported.

Okada will set up a committee of experts to examine the documents before announcing the government’s final judgement in January.

The Second World War in the Pacific theater saw both Japan and the US use new scientific techniques as weapons against civilian populations. Two books – “A Plague upon Humanity: The Hidden History of Japan’s Biological Warfare Program” by Daniel Barenblatt, and Charles Pellegrino’s “Last Train from Hiroshima” – take readers in for a closer view: here.

1 thought on “Secret US-Japanese nuclear pact revealed

  1. Japan confirms Cold War-era ‘secret’ pacts with US

    Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, left, greets University of Tokyo Prof. Shinichi Kitaoka, leader of a Japanese government-appointed panel on the existence of once-secret Cold War-era pacts between Japan and the U.S. on nuclear arms and other issues, as Kitaoka submits a report to Okada at the ministry in Tokyo,

    Japan, Tuesday, March 9, 2010. The panel confirmed the existence of the pacts, ending decades of official denial by Tokyo. While declassified U.S. documents have already confirmed such 1960s agreements, Tuesday’s revelation was the first from the Japanese government. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

    By MARI YAMAGUCHI
    The Associated Press

    Tuesday, March 9, 2010; 9:25 AM

    TOKYO — Japan confirmed for the first time Tuesday the existence of once-secret Cold War-era pacts with the U.S. that tacitly allowed nuclear-armed warships to enter Japanese ports in violation of Tokyo’s postwar principles.

    While declassified U.S. documents have already confirmed such 1960s agreements, Tuesday’s revelation broke with decades of official denials.

    The investigation by a government-mandated panel is part of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s campaign to rein in the power of bureaucrats and make his government, which was elected to power last year, more open than that of the long-ruling conservatives, who repeatedly denied the existence of such pacts.

    “It’s regrettable that such facts were not disclosed to the public for such a long time, even after the end of the Cold War era,” Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada told a news conference, adding that the investigation was meant to restore public trust in Japan’s diplomacy.

    The panel examined documents surrounding four pacts, including Tokyo’s tacit permission that U.S. nuclear-armed warships could make calls at Japanese ports – a violation of Japan’s so-called three non-nuclear principles not to make, own or allow the entry of atomic weapons.

    There is strong aversion to nuclear weapons in Japan, the only country to suffer atomic bombings – in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

    Speculation about the existence of such secret agreements have been swirling in Japan for years so the panel’s findings most likely will simply confirm public suspicions rather than shock or anger people. Some are also aware of U.S. documents about these matters.

    Analysts welcomed the move as a positive step toward more transparency in the Japanese government but said it probably won’t revive the sagging popularity of Hatoyama’s government or affect U.S.-Japan ties, which have grown strained recently because of a dispute about relocating a key Marine base on the southern island of Okinawa.

    “It’s a good thing for Japanese democracy, given that the previous governments have been telling blunt lies to the public,” said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.

    “But I don’t think it’s going to have a short-term impact on the government’s popularity,” he said. “A lot of people look at this as something that belongs to history.”

    Under a security alliance with the U.S., some 47,000 American troops are stationed in Japan, and the U.S. protects the country under its nuclear umbrella.

    Okada said it was possible that before 1991, when the U.S. stopped carrying battle-ready nuclear weapons, American warships might have had nuclear weapons as they entered Japanese waters or entered Japanese ports.

    Reacting to the six-member panel’s findings, summarized in a 108-page report, Hatoyama said there would be no changes to Japan’s non-nuclear policy.

    The panel, led by University of Tokyo professor Shinichi Kitaoka, said that while documents showed that Washington and Tokyo appeared to have differing interpretations about allowing nuclear-armed ships into Japanese waters, it was likely that Tokyo and Washington shared an unspoken understanding permitting them to make port calls in Japan without consent.

    The experts also acknowledged that Tokyo and Washington had secret agreements allowing the U.S. to use military bases in Japan without prior consent in case of emergency on the Korean Peninsula during the Korean War.

    The panel said it could not find specific evidence showing a secret pact allowing the U.S. to bring nuclear weapons into Okinawa after the 1972 reversion of the island to Japan. But it acknowledged that there was a vague secret agreement over Japan’s cost burdens for Okinawa’s 1972 reversion to Japan.

    Associated Press writer Malcolm Foster contributed to this report.

    (This version CORRECTS the spelling of professor’s name to Kitaoka, instead of Kataoka.)

    Like

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.