Jun 25 06:54 AM US/Eastern
(AP) - TOKYO, June 25 (Kyodo) — Then Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi and Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama were aware, when negotiating the revised Japan-U.S. security treaty in 1960, that a diplomatic record to allow U.S. nuclear-armed vessels to enter Japanese ports without prior consultation amounted to a secret agreement, a newly discovered U.S. document showed Friday.
Akira Kurosaki, associate professor of international politics at Fukushima University, found the document at the U.S. National Archives. It is the first time such a document has been found.
The Confidential Record of Discussion, forged by Fujiyama and the U.S. side, had a clause reflecting the U.S. preference for excluding transits and port calls by U.S. vessels carrying nuclear weapons from requiring prior consultation under the security treaty.
The newly found document -- a confidential letter exchanged between U.S. officials in Tokyo and Washington in 1963 -- states Kishi and Fujiyama "clearly understood" the meaning of the document, challenging a recent conclusion reached by a panel of experts commissioned by the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
In a report on secret nuclear pacts released in March, the panel stopped short of acknowledging the Confidential Record of Discussion as direct evidence of a secret agreement.
The panel concluded that, at the time of revising the security treaty, Japan and the United States "intentionally" avoided pursuing whether the entry of U.S. vessels into Japanese ports would be subject to prior consultation so as not to disrupt their alliance.
Such a tacit agreement, or "secret pact in a broad sense," became fixed after U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin Reischauer told Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira in 1963 that Washington did not consider the port calls as subject to prior consultation.
But the newly found document contradicts the panel's conclusion.
In a letter dated March 15, 1963, Earle Richey, first secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, told Robert Fearey, officer in charge of Japanese affairs at the U.S. State Department's Office of East Asian Affairs, that "the meaning of paragraph 2c. of the Confidential Record of Discussion was clearly understood by Kishi and Fujiyama at the time of the Treaty negotiations," quoting Fearey's statement in his letter of Feb. 12, 1962.
Paragraph 2c. stipulated that existing procedures concerning transits and port calls by U.S. vessels and aircraft -- which had been in place before the treaty revision -- would be excluded from prior consultation requirements.
The U.S. side had taken the view from the beginning that U.S. nuclear- armed vessels were included. The newly discovered document suggests that Kishi and Fujiyama had accepted such an interpretation.
In the letter, Richey also wrote to Fearey, who was deeply involved in the treaty revision, that the embassy went over files on the treaty negotiations but was unable to locate any record on bilateral consultation on the matter.
The diplomat went on to conclude that "any discussions held with the GOJ (Government of Japan) were strictly between (U.S. Ambassador to Japan Douglas) MacArthur and Kishi and Fujiyama and that no record was ever made of it" because the matter concerning nuclear weapons placed aboard U.S. Seventh Fleet vessels and aircraft was "politically delicate" at the time.
The prior consultation rule required Washington to consult with Tokyo in advance on the "introduction" of nuclear weapons, given the strong antinuclear sentiment among the Japanese public following the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
But the existence of the tacit agreement has revealed that Japan's principles of not possessing, producing or allowing nuclear weapons on its territory were a mere facade.
Wednesday marked the 50th anniversary of the ratification of the revised security treaty, which committed the United States to helping defend Japan if it came under attack and which has provided bases and ports for U.S. forces in Japan.
Kishi resigned the same day the treaty was ratified on June 23, 1960.
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