U.S. pressed Japan in 1959 on court ruling on U.S. military presence

Apr 29 10:41 AM US/Eastern

TOKYO, April 29 (AP) - (Kyodo) — The then U.S. ambassador to Japan in 1959 pressured Japanese officials to overrule a lower court decision which decided that the U.S. military presence was unconstitutional, according to recently declassified documents made available Tuesday.

Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II, concerned about the ruling by the Tokyo District Court, pressed then Japanese Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama to appeal the case directly to the Supreme Court, skipping a high court, and held backroom talks with Kotaro Tanaka, then chief justice of the Supreme Court over the matter, the documents showed.

MacArthur was a nephew of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who oversaw the Allies' occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1951.

At the center was a 1957 incident, known as the Sunakawa case, in which seven people were arrested in July of that year after demonstrating against an expansion construction of the U.S. military base in Tachikawa, Tokyo. On March 30, 1959, the district court ruled they were not guilty, while saying the U.S. military presence in Japan violates the nation's pacifist Constitution.

In a telegraph sent to the U.S. State Department the following day, MacArthur wrote that he met with Fujiyama earlier in the day and "stressed importance of GOJ (government of Japan) taking speedy action to rectify ruling by Tokyo District Court."

"I expressed view that ruling not only created complications for security treaty discussions to which Fujiyama attaches such importance but also may create confusion in minds of public" and urged the Japanese government to bring it directly to the Supreme Court, he wrote.

A telegraph from MacArthur to the department on April 24 that year also showed the chief justice of the Supreme Court had contacted the U.S. ambassador.

The Supreme Court on Dec. 16, 1959, dismissed the district court decision and sent the case back to a lower court. The arrested people were eventually found guilty.

The telegraph and other related documents were found by Shoji Niihara, an expert on Japan-U.S. relations, earlier this month at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.