Henry Kissinger called Japanese "treacherous sons of bitches" for wanting normal relations with China, when he was a trusted aide to president Richard Nixon, according to documents declassified on Friday.
The outburst by the national security adviser came just before Nixon met then Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka at a summit in Hawaii in August 1972, according to transcripts of talks between the powerful negotiator and local and foreign officials released by the National Security Archive.
When Kissinger learned that Tanaka was to travel to China to establish diplomatic ties, he lividly reacted, "Of all the treacherous sons of bitches, the Japs take the cake."
"It's not just their indecent haste in normalizing relations with China, but they even picked National Day as their preference to go there," Kissinger said at a meeting in his hotel room with then US envoy to South Vietnam Ellsworth Bunker.
Kissinger was angry apparently because Japan, a key US ally, defied the foreign policy of the US, which at that time had diplomatic ties only with Taiwan.
Tanaka established diplomatic relations with China on September 29, 1972, a year after the UN expelled Taiwan in favor of China.
It was only seven years later that the US restored formal links with Beijing and severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Nixon however made a landmark visit to China much earlier -- in February 1972 -- to end 20 years of frosty relations between the two countries.
Kissinger's outburst against the Japanese is an example, confirmed by other documents, of his often difficult, sometimes antagonistic, relationship with Japan, a society that he had great difficulty understanding, said the National Security Archive.
WARNING: Research in the journal ‘Geophysical Research Letters’ said due to climate change, heat would become ‘extremely’ dangerous for ‘hajj’ pilgrims later in the century The death toll from this year’s hajj has exceeded 1,000 on Thursday, more than half unregistered worshipers who performed the pilgrimage in extreme heat in Saudi Arabia. The new deaths reported on Thursday included 58 from Egypt, said an Arab diplomat who provided a breakdown showing that of 658 Egyptians who died, 630 were unregistered pilgrims. About 10 countries have reported 1,081 deaths during the pilgrimage, one of the five pillars of Islam which all Muslims with the means must complete at least once. The hajj, whose timing is determined by the lunar Islamic calendar, fell during the oven-like Saudi summer again this
An Australian journalist and former high-profile prisoner yesterday said that Chinese officials tried to “block” her at a news conference in Canberra in an apparent attempt to stem negative coverage of the visit of Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強). A former anchor for Chinese state broadcaster China Global Television Network, Cheng Lei (成蕾) spent three years detained in China on murky spying accusations before she was released to Australia in October last year. She has written extensively about the bleak conditions and tough treatment she faced while in detention. Cheng, now working as a journalist for Sky News Australia, said Chinese officials tried
At least eight people were killed in India yesterday when a goods train driver missed a signal and slammed into an express passenger train from behind, police and railway officials said. Three passenger carriages were derailed and flipped on their side, while one carriage was thrust high into the air, precariously balanced on another. The incident in West Bengal state is the latest to hit India’s creaking rail network, which carries millions of passengers each day — and the most recent reported failure of drivers missing basic signals. About 50 people were injured and taken to hospital, Jaya Varma Sinha, chairman of India’s
When invading Russian troops advanced toward Kyiv and the first explosions rang out in the suburbs, Daria Zymenko took refuge in Gavronshchyna, her parents’ village near the Ukrainian capital. The Russians took control of Gavronshchyna soon after. One day several soldiers, drunk and armed, burst into the family’s home, saying that Zymenko, an illustrator, must be taken in for questioning. What happened to the young woman next forms part of what Ukrainian authorities say is a widespread, systematic campaign of sexual abuse by the Russian invaders. Zymenko is one of the survivors who have overcome their fear and shame to speak of the