Japan’s new center-left rulers plan to lift the lid soon on secret Cold War nuclear and military pacts with the US that were denied for decades by previous conservative governments.
Soon after coming to power, the government set up a panel of historians to probe the long-whispered existence of pacts between the two countries. Their findings are expected to be released some time this week.
The report comes at a sensitive time for relations between Tokyo and Washington amid a squabble over details of the post-war US military presence in Japan and the relocation of a controversial US base.
The clandestine pacts are already open secrets, thanks to whistle-blowers, media leaks and declassified US documents, but the reformist six-month-old government has made a point of clearing the air once and for all.
The “secret treaties” — some of them only hinted at in yellowed diplomatic memos — point to what has long been Japan’s security paradox.
Since its World War II defeat by the US, which dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan has maintained a pacifist and anti-nuclear stance, yet relies on the superpower for nuclear deterrence.
One of the pacts was agreed under late prime minister Eisaku Sato, who won the 1974 Nobel Peace prize for stating Japan’s hallowed “three non-nuclear principles” of not making nuclear weapons, possessing them or allowing them on its soil.
The report is set to confirm that Sato quietly gave the green light in 1969 to then-US president Richard Nixon to take nuclear arms to Okinawa in an emergency even after the island was handed back to Japan in 1972.
The Sato-Nixon deal was kept secret by successive governments of the conservative Liberal Democrats, who ruled Japan with only one break for over half a century until their ouster in last year’s landslide election.
An original minute of the hush-hush deal only saw the light of day last year when Sato’s son, former lawmaker Shinji Sato, gave the paper, which he said he found in his father’s private desk drawer, to Japanese newspapers.
The report is also expected to confirm a 1960 pact allowing US troops to use Japanese soil “as needed” in case of conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
In another Cold War agreement, Japan gave the nod to the US to sail nuclear-armed warships through Japanese waters and make port stops, declassified US State Department documents suggest.
Yet another deal refers to Japan’s quietly paying for the restoration of former US military areas on Okinawa after the island’s return. Okinawa still hosts more than half of the 47,000 US troops in Japan.
The island is at the center of the current row with Washington, after new Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama launched a review of a 2006 pact that would see a controversial air base moved from a city to a coastal area there.
Many people on the island, the site of some of the bloodiest World War II battles, oppose the US military presence and want the base removed altogether.
Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has pledged a less subservient stance toward the US after long criticizing the Liberal Democrats for their more hawkish stance, including sending non-combat troops to Iraq.
Japan’s new government says it owes the truth to its people, in a show of transparency that has also been criticized as political grand-standing ahead of upper house elections in July.
Some political experts warn that making a show of the secret pacts in the report, which newspapers have said will be released last Tuesday, could further harm ties with the US.
Takehiko Yamamoto, professor of international politics at Waseda University, who recently visited Washington, said he felt mounting distrust among US political experts against Hatoyama and his government.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
The Philippines yesterday slammed an “irresponsible” Chinese state media report claiming a disputed reef in the South China Sea was under Beijing’s control, saying the “status quo” was unchanged. Tiexian Reef (鐵線礁), also known as Sandy Cay Reef, lies near Thitu Island, or Pagasa, where the Philippines stations troops and maintains a coast guard monitoring base. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Saturday said that the China Coast Guard had “implemented maritime control” over Tiexian Reef in the middle of this month. The Philippines and China have been engaged in months of confrontations over the South China Sea, which Beijing claims nearly in its
RSS