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Revealed: Japan’s secret nuclear arms deals with USA

Japan ‘lied’ on secret US nuclear deal  Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent , The Australian  March 10, 2010 JAPANESE governments lied to their people for more than 30 years about a “tacit” secret agreement allowing nuclear-armed US vessels to use their ports, a special Foreign Ministry panel reported yesterday.

The tacit agreement, an undisclosed adjunct to the 1960 revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty, allowed breaches of Japan’s Three Non-Nuclear Principles until 1991 when Washington officially halted deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on warships.Successive conservative governments “offered dishonest explanations, including lies from beginning to end”, the panel convened by Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada reported yesterday. “This attitude should not have been allowed under the principle of democracy,” Mr Okada said…..
Liberal Democratic Party governments and senior Foreign Ministry officials were still denying the agreements last year, almost three decades after an authoritative confirmation by former US ambassador Edwin Reischauer….

Eisaku Sato, three times prime minister, won the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize in large part for introducing Japan’s Three Non-Nuclear Principles in 1967.

The principles hold that Japan cannot possess, produce or allow nuclear weapons on its territory.

Sato and Richard Nixon were signatories in 1969 to another agreement, on the reversion of Okinawa from US military control to Japan, which had secret understandings…..an agreement that the Americans, who continued operating military bases on Okinawa after it reverted in 1972, could bring nuclear weapons back to the territory…..

Tokyo continued to deny the agreements, even after they became officially inoperative in 1991 as a result of George H. W. Bush’s decision to withdraw tactical and theatre nuclear weapons from the field. It continued its denials even as US declassification brought to light documents pointing to the existence of the four agreements.

Japan ‘lied’ on secret US nuclear deal | The Australian

March 10, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, secrets,lies and civil liberties | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear spin, radiation, radioactive