April 3, 2010
Tokyo, April 3 (Jiji Press) -- Japan's Foreign Ministry has admitted the existence of documents about a Japan-U.S. secret meeting over a court case involving a U.S. military base decades ago, it was learned Saturday.
The ministry disclosed the 34-page documents after it long denied their existence, according to Gentaro Tsuchiya, one of former defendants in the case involving the so-called Sunagawa incident of 1957.
The case involved Tsuchiya and six other protesters who were indicted for trespassing on a then U.S. base in the Tokyo town of Sunagawa, now called the city of Tachikawa, in July 1957.
Tokyo District Court in March 1959 acquitted the defendants, saying the base is unconstitutional. Prosecutors appealed the ruling directly to the Supreme Court by skipping a high court.
Documents found at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration in April 2008 showed that then U.S. Ambassador to Japan Douglas MacArthur II pressed Japanese officials to appeal the ruling directly to the Supreme Court.
(2010/04/03-18:38)
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