BY NORIO YATSU, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN2009/8/1
The Foreign Ministry raced to destroy more than 1,000 tons of records in the months before a disclosure law took effect in 2001, a study by a private body has found.
The speed and the scale of the activity suggest the ministry was desperate to avert demands for the release of sensitive material, possibly including classified documents about a secret deal between Japan and the United States on the movement of nuclear weapons in Japanese territory.
According to the study by Information Clearinghouse Japan, the amount of material pulped by the ministry in fiscal 2000 was easily the largest by any government body.
It suggested the ministry had carefully planned the operation to hide damaging information.
The study by the nonprofit body reveals the Foreign Ministry destroyed about 1,280 tons of material in fiscal 2000, which ended in March 2001. The information disclosure law went into effect the following month.
That was more than double the volume discarded by the Finance Ministry, which trashed about 620 tons, making it second among government ministries and agencies.
The group made its findings based on copies of government records obtained using the information disclosure law.
The findings also showed that the volume of documents shredded by the Foreign Ministry increased conspicuously in fiscal 1999, when the legislation was enacted. In fiscal 1997, the ministry destroyed about 200 tons of documents, roughly the same amount discarded by other government branches that year.
The volume peaked in fiscal 2000, then fell over the following two fiscal years.
Yukiko Miki, a director of the group, said the timing and trajectory of the ministry's recycling activities were almost certainly no coincidence.
"It's likely the Foreign Ministry had been elaborately preparing to discard material before the enforcement of the law to ensure the material was destroyed rather than being made public."
In July, the ministry was catapulted into controversy over claims by former Japanese government officials that, at the height of the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union, Japan reached a deal allowing U.S. warships and aircraft to carry nuclear weapons through Japanese territory.
The government has consistently denied the existence of the pact, which was supposedly clinched around 1960.
But declassified U.S. documents and testimony from high-ranking U.S. officials contradict their claims.
Ikuko Komachiya, a lawyer who specializes in cases involving disclosure of government documents--including another alleged secret deal between Japan and the United States over the 1972 return of Okinawa to Japan--is appalled by the prospect that records about the pact may have been destroyed.
"The government cannot be forgiven for destroying crucial documents without being made accountable to the public (over such a deal)," she said. "We can't review the government's policy since what really happened remains a mystery. This sort of thing will happen again unless people voice their anger."
Under current law, ministries and agencies are given discretion to determine which documents they will keep.
Osamu Ishii, professor emeritus of the history of diplomacy at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, said he was disgusted by the government's action, which revealed a significant difference in the way the Japanese and U.S. governments handle their records.
"In the United States, even telephone conversations made by high-ranking government officials are taped and their transcripts kept as official documents," Ishii said.
"If the U.S. government does not disclose the content of official documents, it at least specifies that they exist. That reflects its sincere belief that official documents belong to the public.
"In contrast, ordering official records to be destroyed, as was the case here, is tantamount to the debasement of history and a crime against taxpayers. I'm outraged."
Classified documents destroyed by the Foreign Ministry are recycled into toilet paper and other products.
Government bodies generally destroy their records by shredding them, crushing them or dissolving them in water.
The Justice Ministry combines the first and the third method.
It shreds documents with a large shredder in the basement of its building, then sends them to a recycling factory to be dissolved in water.
The Foreign Ministry uses the third method.
According to people familiar with the disposal procedure, the ministry dissolves classified documents in water using a large machine in the basement of its building, then processes them into clumps of material similar to that used to make papier-mache.
The machine is capable of processing about 2 tons of paper a day.
It mixes the paper and water in a one-to-one ratio until the paper loses its shape and its pulp fibers become loose.
When the text on the paper is no longer legible, the pulp is made into balls, about the same size as those used in pachinko.
These are then given to a recycler, which processes them into toilet paper, tissue paper and other paper products. Some of this toilet paper is used at the ministry.(IHT/Asahi: August 1,2009)
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