EDITORIAL: Destroyed documents

Many key documents concerning secret Japan-U.S. agreements including one allowing U.S. warships to carry nuclear weapons into Japan were likely destroyed by the Foreign Ministry.

Kazuhiko Togo, director of the ministry's Treaties Bureau from 1998 to 1999, told the Lower House Foreign Affairs Committee that half of the "most important documents" detailing the secret pacts he handed over to his successor had not been made public.

If the alleged destruction of the documents is true, the government has doubly betrayed public confidence. An exhaustive investigation must be carried out to get to the truth and ensure that the people involved in the destruction be held accountable.

A report recently released by an expert committee confirmed the existence of secret pacts, including the nuclear agreement, struck when the bilateral security treaty was revised in 1960. The group pointed out that some documents that should exist had not been found. Parts of some documents were "inexplicably missing," the report also said.

There had been testimony claiming that before the information disclosure law went into effect in April 2001, senior Foreign Ministry officials ordered the destruction of documents concerning the secret deals.

In his Diet testimony, Togo said he had heard from an insider that documents on this matter had been destroyed.

In a democratic country, there should be no place for a secret agreement with a foreign government.

If there is absolutely no choice but to keep an agreement secret for the sake of national security, the government should make a record of the process leading to the decision and ensure later publication of the record for the verdict of history.

It is unacceptable for the government to rob the public of materials needed to judge crucial policy decisions made in the past, especially after lying to them for half a century by claiming there was no secret deal with the United States.

The documents that have been declassified and made public highlighted the predicament of Japanese politicians and diplomats in those days. They agonized over how to reconcile the public's strong anti-nuclear sentiment with the U.S. nuclear umbrella that covered Japan in the middle of the Cold War.

Destroying the diplomatic records is tantamount to consigning the struggles of those policymakers to oblivion and tossing their efforts into the dustbin of history.

Such an act makes it impossible to examine the past political decisions and policies to glean lessons for the future.

The new official documents management law, due to come into force in April next year, defines official documents as "intellectual resources shared by the people that support the very foundation of sound democracy."

The law lays down strict rules for the management of government documents, requiring the prime minister's approval for destruction.

In response to Togo's testimony, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said his ministry must conduct an inquiry into the allegations.

Since the alleged destruction of the documents happened relatively recently, some bureaucrats still working for the government may be involved.

There are probably concerns within the ministry that holding these bureaucrats accountable would create a rift among its staff.

But the government should not shy away from investigating the allegations that these documents were destroyed. That would undermine its own efforts to restore public confidence in Japan's diplomacy.

It was as part of these efforts that the government, led by the Democratic Party of Japan, finally disclosed the truth about the deals after years of denial by Liberal Democratic Party governments.

We hope Okada will issue clear instructions to create a new independent body to question foreign ministers and top Foreign Ministry officials at that time.

It is possible that bureaucrats at the Foreign Ministry decided on their own to destroy the records.

Uncovering the truth is crucial also for correcting the propensity among bureaucrats toward irresponsible cover-ups of inconvenient facts.

The Diet is also responsible to make an effort to get to the bottom of what happened. Instead of entrusting the task to the Foreign Ministry, the Diet could and should use its right to investigate state affairs.

--The Asahi Shimbun, March 20