Despite decades of denials by Washington and Tokyo, US officials believe they enjoyed a secret pact to transport nuclear weapons through Japan, newly declassified documents showed.
The disclosure came after Japan’s left-leaning government ended more than half a century of conservative rule and launched a probe into thousands of files to settle longstanding suspicions of a hush-hush pact.
Any evidence of an agreement would trigger charges of hypocrisy as Japan is the only nation to have suffered nuclear attacks and has campaigned for the worldwide abolition of the ultra-destructive weapons.
The National Security Archive at George Washington University released documents on Tuesday showing that US officials believed they had an understanding with Japan when the allies signed a new security treaty in 1960.
A confidential US State Department memo prepared in 1960 for then secretary of state Christian Herter to brief Congress said Washington had to consult Japan on “introduction of nuclear weapons.”
However, it said that the US, which has stationed troops in Japan since its defeat in World War II, could use Japanese soil “as needed” in an emergency if communist neighbor North Korea launched an attack.
In a cable sent in 1963, then-US ambassador to Japan Edwin Reischauer said he quietly met for breakfast with the foreign minister, Masayoshi Ohira, and sensed a “full understanding” on the nuclear issue.
“Ohira took [the] presentation in stride and showed not rpt [repeat] not [the] slightest desire to persuade us to alter [the] standing practice,” the cable said.
Whatever the sensitivity of nuclear weapons in Japan, the issue largely involves past history. In 1991 as the Cold War ended, then-president George H.W. Bush stopped US vessels from carrying tactical nuclear weapons.
However, both the US and Japan’s previous governments have steadfastly rejected an inquiry, with Washington saying its military policy is never to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons.
“In terms of nuclear weapons, there has always been a resistance to releasing information, particularly where they are based,” said Robert Wampler, a senior fellow at the National Security Archive who led the study.
“But here we are talking about Cold War agreements — dealing with Korea, Vietnam, the Soviets and China,” Wampler said, pleading for the release of more documents.
“It’s secret in name only and I think it would be really great if the Japanese government would clear the air,” he said.
However, any investigation could also get bogged down in semantics on what the US and Japan agreed to.
One declassified 1960 document presented to the secretary of state said in typeface that there was a “confidential agreement.”
The word “agreement” was crossed off with a pen and replaced with “understanding.”
The declassified material also said that US negotiators stressed that they would not “introduce” nuclear weapons to Japan — drawing a distinction with transiting the arms.
The documents provide no clear smoking-gun on one persistent suspicion — that then-US president Richard Nixon insisted on the nuclear transit rights when handing the southern island chain to Okinawa back to Japan in 1972.
However, a 1969 memo by Henry Kissinger, then the national security adviser, detailed Nixon’s negotiating strategy — saying he would press until the last minute to keep US nuclear weapons in Okinawa and was ready to drop the demand in exchange for the transit rights.
Nixon negotiated the handover with Japanese prime minister Eisaku Sato, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize largely for his so-called “three principles” — that Japan will not possess, produce or allow nuclear weapons on its soil.
The US dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, killing more than 210,000 people and ending World War II.
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
RSS