Perspectives

Deeper probe needed into 'secret pact' on nuclear-armed U.S. ships' port calls

A Foreign Ministry investigation into a secret Japan-U.S. pact on U.S. nuclear-armed ships' port calls has ended together with the administration of former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

In closing the investigation, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada commented, "To lose diplomatic documents is to lose history."

Normally this would be regarded as a wise saying, but in light of the Foreign Ministry's investigation into the secret pact, it is a stray comment. The reason is that the secret pact is not yet "past history"; it is Japan's nuclear strategy today.

The "diplomatic documents" the foreign minister referred to were those in a "red file" created by Kazuhiko Togo while he was serving as director-general of the Foreign Ministry's Treaties Bureau. Togo testified before the Diet that he collected memos and diplomatic documents relating to the secret pact and passed them on to his successor.

A committee investigating the secret pact, however, failed to find the red file. It concluded, "Documents were carelessly destroyed, and the possibility that important documents including those relating to the so-called secret pact were lost cannot be ruled out."

There are two ways of approaching "secret pact." One is from the fact that it was "secret" and the other from the fact that it was a "pact." Approaching it from the point that it was "secret" involves probing issues relating to the handling of the documents: Were there secret documents and records of those documents? If they existed, where are they now? This is what the foreign minister investigated. Investigations actually uncovered a secret agreement on Okinawa signed by former Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato and former U.S. President Richard Nixon but the whereabouts of the red file remains unknown.

Approaching the agreement from the perspective that it is a "pact" involves examination of the content. How is Japan's nuclear policy carried out under the U.S. nuclear umbrella? To use recent terminology, the issue of "expanded deterrence" comes into play.

Is the secret pact between Japan and the United States which allows U.S. nuclear-armed vessels and aircraft to make port calls to Japan without prior consultation still valid? Have Japan and the U.S. agreed that there is no validity to the promise not to oppose the U.S. military's introduction of nuclear weapons to the Okinawa Prefecture regions of Kadena and Henoko without prior consultation in a contingency situation the Far East?

Okada has closed the curtains on the secret pact issue without dealing with the fact that it is a "pact." At the same time, Hatoyama declared while he was prime minister that Japan should stand by its three non-nuclear principles of not possessing, manufacturing or allowing the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japanese territory.

If the three non-nuclear principles were built upon the secret pact, the situation would be no different from that under successive Liberal Democratic Party-led administrations. The new administration of Prime Minister Naoto Kan should rename the principles.

Or is it the case that Kan intends to destroy the past secret pact and really adhere to a true set of three non-nuclear principles? Would this not be out of step with the strategy of the U.S. nuclear umbrella and U.S. President Barack Obama's theory of expanded nuclear deterrence?

Kan said that during his days as a student, he studied under political scholar Yonosuke Nagai. Nagai's work "Heiwa no Daisho" (The price of peace) criticized the then Japan Socialist Party's theory of unarmed neutrality. Is Kan's reference to Nagai a preparation to make a switch to two-non-nuclear principles instead of three? (By Hidetoshi Kaneko, Expert Senior Writer)

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