Nuclear Noh drama - Tokyo, Washington and the case of the missing nuclear agreements

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 can be settled.

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