"Secret" Nuclear Pact not that Surprising

Often governments undertake politically unpopular, but necessary decisions. Keeping the voters in the dark and suppressing information that if known will cause them to loose favour, and face almost certain defeat at the polls. It is now widely alleged that a secret agreement was signed between the government of Japan and that of the United States to permit nuclear weapons in transit to pass through Japan without express knowledge being conveyed to the government in Tokyo.

Japan, the only victim of a nuclear weapons offensive, remains proud of its three main nonnuclear principles that are in theory, still in place; to not possess nuclear weapons, to not produce said weapons nor to permit the weapons in Japan. The policy is now being called into question with the upcoming political memoir that is to be published by Hajime Morita, a former House of Representatives member and foreign minister to the late Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira. According to Morita's account he is able to confirm the agreement, stemming from his affirmation of the pact with a Washington counterpart in 1963.

According to the Japan Times, "The secret nuclear deal is believed to have been agreed on bilaterally when the Japanese U.S. security treaty was revised in 1960, even though the treaty officially requires Washington to hold prior consultations with Tokyo before bringing nuclear weapons into Japan." However Morita confirms in his upcoming book that in practice the consultations were done away with and no advance notice was given.

In late November of this year, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, "officially acknowledged the existence of a secret Japan-U.S. pact that allowed U.S. vessels carrying nuclear weapons to enter Japanese territory." The government has been constantly denying the agreement since its inception, claiming that no nuclear weapons were brought into Japanese territory.

Hatoyama, and the Democratic Party of Japan are obviously playing politics with this decades old agreement. The knowledge that in certain circumstances U.S nuclear weapons made port calls to American bases in Japan should not come as a surprise, but should be taken as expected behaviour. The long established Liberal Democratic Party made these agreements ages ago and the DPJ will gain political favour by shedding light on the lies offered by their adversaries.

"After the Hatoyama administration took over in September, the foreign ministry's investigative task force looked at 2,694 files related to the security agreement and 571 related to the return of Okinawa that were found in the ministry archives, as well as approximately 400 files that were found at the Japanese embassy in the U.S," according to the Mainichi Daily News.

Japan would have had little room to oppose this treaty as it was signed in 1960, by then U.S. Ambassador to Japan Douglas MacArthur II and then-Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama. After falling victim to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki roughly 13 years earlier, with a pro-American government and a heavy American presence in Japan with a constitution that reflected American values, it is of little wonder that such an agreement would be made. The more surprising news is that the American negotiators settled for such a weak agreement on this front. It would not be shocking if the inquiry revealed that nuclear weapons were permanently installed on American bases in Japan, given the proximity to Russia and the strategic location of Japan to many perceived threats of the day.