Another U.S. document shows Japan knew of secret nuclear pact

TOKYO, July 1 Kyodo -
The Japanese government secretly agreed to exempt U.S. ships and aircraft
carrying nuclear weapons from prior consultation required under the bilateral
security treaty when they transited through Japan, an internal memo drawn up by
the U.S. administration in 1961 showed Thursday.
According to the memo, the administration of President John F. Kennedy carried
over from the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower the recognition
that Japan was aware of the existence of a secret agreement at the time the
treaty was revised in 1960.
The document, obtained by Kyodo News at the U.S. national Archives near
Washington, also gives credence to a recently found U.S. State Department
record showing that when negotiating the treaty revisions in 1960, Prime
Minister Nobusuke Kishi was aware that arrangements allowing U.S. nuclear-armed
vessels to enter Japanese ports without consultation amounted to a secret
agreement.
But whereas successive U.S. administrations shared the recognition that
transits and port calls by U.S. vessels carrying nuclear weapons would be
excluded from the prior consultation requirement, the Kishi government
apparently did not pass on that recognition to its successor, the government of
Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda.
The memo, dated June 14, 1961 and written by a State Department official in
charge of Japanese affairs, summarizes talking points for Kennedy prior to his
summit with Ikeda in Washington from June 20 that year.
The goal, it says, was to enable nuclear-powered U.S. Navy submarines to make
port calls in Japan in the future. The navy was replacing conventional-powered
attack submarines with nuclear-powered ones at the time.
The memo says that while port calls in Japan by nuclear-powered submarines
would be desirable, such moves might provide an ''excuse'' for people in Japan
opposed to the bilateral security alliance to raise questions about existing
arrangements concerning nuclear-armed U.S. ships.
If the opponents raised the ''specter'' of nuclear weapons, the document says,
they might win the ''sympathies of the great majority of the Japanese people,
who are strongly opposed to anything related to nuclear weapons,'' adding,
''This could endanger the present very satisfactory arrangements for the entry
of U.S. vessels into Japan.''
While the security treaty requires consultation before nuclear weapons are
''introduced'' into Japan, Tokyo ''has confidentially agreed, in effect, that
weapons on vessels and aircraft in transit through Japan are none of its
concern,'' the memo says. The Japanese public was ''unaware of this
confidential agreement,'' it adds.
According to a confidential letter exchanged between U.S. officials in Tokyo
and Washington in 1963, Kishi and then Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama had
''clearly understood'' the meaning of the Confidential Record of Discussion,
which had a clause reflecting the U.S. preference for excluding transits and
port calls by nuclear-armed U.S. vessels from requiring prior consultation.
The record was forged between the two countries at the time of the treaty
revision.
But Ikeda, who took office after Kishi's resignation the same day the revised
treaty was ratified in June 1960, made remarks in parliament that could be
interpreted as reneging on the secret agreement, saying his country would not
allow U.S. vessels carrying nuclear warheads to make port calls.
Upset by the remarks, the Kennedy administration had then U.S. Ambassador to
Japan Edwin Reischauer confirm the secret agreement with then Foreign Minister
Masayoshi Ohira in 1963, saying that Washington did not consider the port calls
as subject to prior consultation.
Japan proclaims the principles of not possessing, producing or allowing nuclear
weapons on its territory. The Japan-U.S. security treaty requires Washington to
consult with Tokyo in advance on the introduction of nuclear weapons.
But a Japanese Foreign Ministry panel concluded in March that there was a tacit
agreement, or a ''secret pact in a broad sense,'' under which Japan effectively
allowed U.S. nuclear-armed vessels to visit its ports without prior
consultation in violation of the non-nuclear principles.
==Kyodo