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“Secret” 1965 Memo Reveals Plans to Keep U.S. Bases and Nuclear Weapons Options in Okinawa After Reversion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Steve Rabson
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Ambassador Edwin Reischauer provided the framework for the Japanese government's betrayal of Okinawan aspirations and Japan's “Three Non-Nuclear Principles” in the 1969 Reversion Agreement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 8 , Issue 5 , February 2010 , e1
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2010

References

Notes

1 See Matsumoto Tsuyoshi, “Revealing ‘Secret U.S.-Japan Nuclear Understandings’: A solemn obligation of Japan's new government,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 51-3-09, December 21, 2009.

2 Edwin O. Reischauer, My Life Between Japan and America, Harper and Row, New York, 1986, 321.

3 “Command Interviews” conducted in April, 1975, and collected in the U.S. Army War College archives, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

4 Reischauer, 285.

5 Admiral Sharp commented in the Morning Star, official newspaper of the U.S. Pacific Command (December 10, 1965).

6 “Command Interviews.”

7 T. Fujitani, “The Reischauer Memo: Mr. Moto, and Japanese American Soldiers,” Critical Asian Studies, 33: 3 (2001), 380.

8 See “Japan : Time to Confess, Nuclear ‘Lie’ Strains U.S. Ties,” Time, June 8, 1981:

The revelations, since buttressed by other former U.S. and Japanese diplomats, exploded across Japan. Last week Socialist Leader Ichio Asukata declared that the government of Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki ‘deserves 10,000 deaths’ for the nuclear deceit. Leftist and labor organizations rallied to protest port calls by U.S. naval vessels and demanded on-site inspections of all U.S. bases in Japan …

The nuclear question has strained U.S.-Japanese ties before. In 1974 retired Seventh Fleet Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque told the U.S. Congress substantially what Reischauer told Mainichi Shimbun. At the time the U.S. simply reassured Japan that it was not violating the agreement. Now, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield has again advised Tokyo that the U.S. is honoring its commitments. Suzuki cites his own proof: since the U.S. has never asked for the “prior consultations” required for admitting a nuclear-armed vessel, he concludes serenely that “no nuclear weapons have ever been brought into Japan.

That pleasant fiction faces widespread doubt. A poll by Asahi Shimbun last week showed that only 21% of the legislators in Japan's Diet believe the government.

9 “Campbell: Stick to Base Relocation Deal,” The Japan Times, January 24, 2010.

10 “Isetsu hantai no Inamine-shi ga tosen: Nago shicho-sen” (Candidate Inamine, opposing base relocation, wins Nago mayoral election), Okinawa Taimusu, January 25, 2010.

11 See Campbell (above) and “U.S. admiral: Base move not down to mayor,” Japan Times, January 28, 2010.