Time to Confess

Nuclear "lie"strains U.S. ties

Since the 1950s, Japan's Liberal Democratic government has solemnly and repeatedly affirmed three basic principles about nuclear weapons: not to make them, possess them or allow them into the country. In 1960, with the signing of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, Washington agreed not to "introduce" nuclear weapons into Japan. Two weeks ago, however, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer revealed that the two countries have ever since been living a convenient lie. In an interview with Tokyo's Mainichi Shimbun, Reischauer asserted that U.S. naval vessels carrying nuclear weapons have routinely visited Japanese ports--with Tokyo's tacit approval.*

The revelations, since buttressed by other former U.S. and Japanese diplomats, exploded across Japan. Last week Socialist Leader Ichio Asukata declared that the government of Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki "deserves 10,000 deaths" for the nuclear deceit. Leftist and labor organizations rallied to protest port calls by U.S. naval vessels and demanded on-site inspections of all U.S. bases in Japan.

The crisis is the latest in a recent series of setbacks to U.S.-Japanese relations. In April the U.S. nuclear submarine George Washington collided with and sank the Japanese freighter Nissho Mam, killing two Japanese crewmen--and then left the scene. In May, during joint U.S.Japanese naval exercises, U.S. vessels were blamed for cutting expensive salmon-fishing lines. Last week it appeared that Japanese ships or shadowing Soviet vessels might have been responsible, but the exercises had already been suspended. Finally, Suzuki's apparently successful visit to Washington in May turned into an embarrassment after a joint communique referred for the first time to a U.S.-Japan "alliance," a phrase that to the Japanese connotes a military pact. Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ito, who helped draft the dispatch, resigned.

The nuclear question has strained U.S.-Japanese ties before. In 1974 retired Seventh Fleet Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque told the U.S. Congress substantially what Reischauer told Mainichi Shimbun. At the time the U.S. simply reassured Japan that it was not violating the agreement. Now, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield has again advised Tokyo that the U.S. is honoring its commitments. Suzuki cites his own proof: since the U.S. has never asked for the "prior consultations" required for admitting a nuclear-armed vessel, he concludes serenely that "no nuclear weapons have ever been brought into Japan."

That pleasant fiction faces widespread doubt. A poll by Asahi Shimbun last week showed that only 21% of the legislators in Japan's Diet believe the government. A more truthful way out might be in the very loophole that, says Reischauer, has been used for two decades. The two countries have apparently agreed to interpret the "introduction" of nuclear weapons in different ways. Mochikomi, the Japanese word, can mean a vague "carrying in." But the English "to introduce," Reischauer argues, "sounds as though we are setting them up in permanent position, for storage or as missiles or something. We promised not to do that and we've been very good about it." At the same time, he says, the Japanese must recognize that the U.S. does not view the entry of nuclear-armed vessels into their waters as a violation, and that the Japanese government has quietly accepted the fact. As Reischauer points out, "Russian ships are going through Japanese straits loaded with nuclear weapons." The U.S. vessels that help provide a nuclear umbrella for Japan require at least the same privilege.

*The news should not have been a surprise. Reischauer discussed the ship visits in the latest edition of his Japan: the Story of a Nation, published earlier this year, but the story went unnoticed until the Mainichi interview.

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