EDITORIAL: Secret deal on nukes

For decades, the Japanese government has denied the existence of a secret agreement with the United States that allowed U.S. nuclear weapons into Japanese territory. But a retired Japanese bureaucrat has further exposed the government's "lie."

Ryohei Murata, 79, who was an administrative vice foreign minister from 1987 to 1989, acknowledged the existence of such a pact and revealed that a document concerning the deal was passed on through generations of foreign ministers and administrative vice foreign ministers.

Declassified U.S. diplomatic documents have established the accord's existence as fact. But the Japanese government has continued to deny its existence. Even in the face of Murata's latest testimony, Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura still insisted, "Such a secret agreement does not exist."

But now that we have a former top Foreign Ministry bureaucrat attesting to the existence of the secret deal, it's about time the government stopped lying and came clean on this fact of history.

The secret agreement divulged by Murata was concluded when the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty was revised in 1960. In essence, Tokyo promised Washington that U.S. naval vessels carrying nuclear weapons would be allowed to pass Japanese waters and call at Japanese ports.

Murata noted, "I received the document from my predecessor (when I became administrative vice foreign minister), and explained the contents of the document to two foreign ministers. At the end of my tenure, I handed the document over to my successor."

He also provided details, such as the document was "just one sheet of regular office stationery and placed in an envelope."

Other secret accords have been forged between Japan and the United States. One allows U.S. forces to deploy from bases in Japan, without prior consultation with the Japanese government, if a "contingency" breaks out on the Korean Peninsula.

Under another secret deal, Japan will permit the United States to bring nuclear weapons into Okinawa Prefecture if a crisis arises in the Far East.

These secret agreements were concluded in the 1960s, and have since been acknowledged on multiple occasions through declassified U.S. State Department documents and statements by Edwin O. Reischauer, who served as U.S. ambassador to Japan in the 1960s.

Obviously, not all diplomatic negotiations can or should be made public. At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s in particular, it must have been extremely difficult for Japan, which relied on the United States for national security, to juggle Washington's demands and public concerns at home that Japan could be pulled into America's war.

But decades have passed since those secret agreements were concluded, and the Cold War is now long over. Washington's nuclear strategy is undergoing changes, and so is the nature of the Japan-U.S. alliance. Moreover, the United States, Japan's partner, has disclosed those agreements.

There is absolutely no reason why the Japanese government has to keep those secrets under wraps.

The government must acknowledge the existence of those agreements and admit to the people that it has lied time and again. Without such an admission, the government will not be able to win the public's ready understanding on the future of Japan-U.S. security cooperation.

In a democracy, the government definitely owes it to the people to disclose and explain its foreign policy, even if only after the fact. Continuing to bury its head in the sand is unacceptable if the government hopes to regain the public's trust in diplomacy.

--The Asahi Shimbun, June 30(IHT/Asahi: July 1,2009)