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Monday, 8 March 2010
Japan to unveil secret Cold War pacts with US
Japan’s new centre-left rulers plan to lift the lid soon on secret Cold War nuclear and military pacts with the United States that were denied for decades by previous conservative governments.
Japan’s new centre-left rulers plan to lift the lid soon on secret Cold War nuclear and military pacts with the United States 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 sometime this week.
The report comes at a sensitive time for relations between Tokyo and Washington amid a squabble over details of the post-war American 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 United States, 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 Premier 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 United States 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 centre of the current row with Washington, after new 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 WWII battles, oppose the American military presence and want the base removed altogether.
Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has pledged a less subservient stance toward the United States after long criticising 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 criticised 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 Tuesday, could further harm ties with the United States.
Takehiko Yamamoto, professor of international politics at Waseda University, who recently visited Washington, said he felt mounting distrust among American political experts against Hatoyama and his government.
“Americans are looking at Japan’s historical probe into what is already public in the United States as a mere performance by the DPJ,” he said.
“These deals will expose the hypocritical nature of Japanese politics. But when a nation faces a clear adversary, at that time the Soviet Union, a deterrent capability is an issue that stands apart from democracy.”
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Japan to unveil secret Cold War pacts with US
AFP
07 March 2010
Japan’s new centre-left rulers plan to lift the lid soon on secret Cold War nuclear and military pacts with the United States 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 sometime this week.
The report comes at a sensitive time for relations between Tokyo and Washington amid a squabble over details of the post-war American 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 United States, 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 Premier 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 United States 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 centre of the current row with Washington, after new 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 WWII battles, oppose the American military presence and want the base removed altogether.
Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has pledged a less subservient stance toward the United States after long criticising 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 criticised 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 Tuesday, could further harm ties with the United States.
Takehiko Yamamoto, professor of international politics at Waseda University, who recently visited Washington, said he felt mounting distrust among American political experts against Hatoyama and his government.
“Americans are looking at Japan’s historical probe into what is already public in the United States as a mere performance by the DPJ,” he said.
“These deals will expose the hypocritical nature of Japanese politics. But when a nation faces a clear adversary, at that time the Soviet Union, a deterrent capability is an issue that stands apart from democracy.”
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