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Secret Details of Sordid Okinawan Reversion Deal Revealed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Kyodo News
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Never believe anything until it has been officially denied, warned radical war reporter Claud Cockburn. That famous dictum resonates strongly throughout the murky story of Okinawa's reversion to Japanese rule in 1972.

Tokyo and Washington have always denied the secret pact that obliged Japanese taxpayers to shoulder the burden of compensating Okinawa landowners during the transition. Both governments have clung to that denial despite recent damning testimony from a key Foreign Ministry official and the release of papers in 2000 and 2002 from US government archives proving the existence of the deal beyond all reasonable doubt. Throughout the twists and turns of the scandal, officials on both sides have corrupted the judicial process, lied to the people who pay their salaries and destroyed the lives of the few whistleblowers brave enough to take them on.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 5 , May 2007 , e9
Creative Commons
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.
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Copyright © The Authors 2007