Nuclear Noh Drama: Tokyo, Washington and the Case of the Missing Nuclear Agreements

For more information contact:
Robert Wampler: wampler@gwu.edu

http://www.nsarchive.org

October 13, 2009 - The election of the new Democratic Party government in Japan led by Yukio Hatoyama raises a significant challenge for the Obama administration: the status of secret agreements on nuclear weapons that Tokyo and Washington negotiated in 1960 and 1969. For years, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party claimed that there were no such agreements, denying, for example, allegations that they had allowed U.S. nuclear-armed ships to sail into Japanese ports. Nevertheless, declassified U.S. government documents, interviews with former U.S. Ambassador Edwin O. Reischauer, and memoirs by Japanese diplomats confirm the existence of the secret understandings.

The basic facts about the agreements have been the subject of long-standing controversy in Japan, where a post-Hiroshima, anti-nuclear tradition was at odds with secret understandings crafted to support the operational requirements of America's Cold War nuclear deterrent. The Liberal Democrats might have faced a political disaster if they had acknowledged, as appears to be the case, that the U.S. Navy's nuclear-armed ships had free access to Japanese waters.

Seeking to settle the matter, the new Democratic Party government has launched an internal investigation into the agreements and their negotiating history. To aid this investigation, the National Security Archive today posted on the Web the most important U.S. declassified documents on the issue. Nevertheless, Japan is not likely to act unilaterally to declassify the 1960 and 1969 nuclear agreements. The Obama administration should not only assist Japan so that early declassification of the agreements is possible, but also declassify the remaining still-secret U.S. documents, allowing an old controversy to be settled.

The two secret agreements were negotiated during the Cold War, when the United States Navy routinely transited Pacific waters with nuclear weapons onboard and the possibility of a U.S.-Soviet nuclear war was a matter of routine military planning. One of the agreements was actually a record of discussion that established an agreed and carefully defined interpretation of U.S. commitments regarding nuclear weapons, negotiated in 1960, that allowed transit of nuclear weapons through Japanese territory and waters, relegating the consultation requirement to the introduction and basing of nuclear weapons in Japan.

The other was part of the 1969 agreement reverting Okinawa to Japan: U.S. nuclear weapons on Okinawa would be withdrawn but re-introduction would be possible in an emergency. Even after the end of the Cold War, which brought the worldwide withdrawal of all U.S. theater nuclear weapons, the U.S. government deferred to the Liberal Democrats on the need to keep the agreements secret, but that need is clearly now moot. Declassification is possible and necessary because determining what Tokyo and Washington actually negotiated is a question of significant historical importance and a key missing piece in the nuclear history of the Cold War.

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