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“Secret” 1965 Memo Reveals Plans to Keep U.S. Bases and Nuclear Weapons Options in Okinawa After Reversion

by Steve Rabson

2-14-10

Steve Rabson is professor emeritus of East Asian Studies, Brown University, and an Asia-Pacific Journal Associate. He is the author of Righteous Cause or Tragic Folly: Changing Views of War in Modern Japanese Poetry, and co-editor of Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature from Okinawa. He served as a U.S. Army draftee in Okinawa for eight months in 1967-68. He prepared this introduction for The Asia-Pacific Journal, and wishes to thank Mark Selden, Gavan McCormack, and an outside reviewer for their helpful suggestions.

(1) See Matsumoto Tsuyoshi, "Revealing 'Secret U.S.-Japan Nuclear Understandings': A solemn obligation of Japan’s new government," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 51-3-09, December 21, 2009.

(2) Edwin O. Reischauer, My Life Between Japan and America, Harper and Row, New York, 1986, 321.

(3) “Command Interviews” conducted in April, 1975, and collected in the U.S. Army War College archives, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

(4) Reischauer, 285.

(5) Admiral Sharp commented in the Morning Star, official newspaper of the U.S. Pacific Command (December 10, 1965).

(6) “Command Interviews.”

(7) T. Fujitani, “The Reischauer Memo: Mr. Moto, and Japanese American Soldiers,” Critical Asian Studies, 33: 3 (2001), 380.

(8) See “Japan : Time to Confess, Nuclear ‘Lie’ Strains U.S. Ties,” Time, June 8, 1981:

The revelations, since buttressed by other former U.S. and Japanese diplomats, exploded across Japan. Last week Socialist Leader Ichio Asukata declared that the government of Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki ‘deserves 10,000 deaths’ for the nuclear deceit. Leftist and labor organizations rallied to protest port calls by U.S. naval vessels and demanded on-site inspections of all U.S. bases in Japan . . .

The nuclear question has strained U.S.-Japanese ties before. In 1974 retired Seventh Fleet Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque told the U.S. Congress substantially what Reischauer told Mainichi Shimbun. At the time the U.S. simply reassured Japan that it was not violating the agreement. Now, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield has again advised Tokyo that the U.S. is honoring its commitments. Suzuki cites his own proof: since the U.S. has never asked for the "prior consultations" required for admitting a nuclear-armed vessel, he concludes serenely that "no nuclear weapons have ever been brought into Japan.

That pleasant fiction faces widespread doubt. A poll by Asahi Shimbun last week showed that only 21% of the legislators in Japan's Diet believe the government.

(9) “Campbell: Stick to Base Relocation Deal,” The Japan Times, January 24, 2010.

(10) “Isetsu hantai no Inamine-shi ga tosen: Nago shicho-sen” (Candidate Inamine, opposing base relocation, wins Nago mayoral election), Okinawa Taimusu, January 25, 2010.

(11) See Campbell (above) and “U.S. admiral: Base move not down to mayor,” Japan Times, January 28, 2010