From the Yomuiri Shimbun: U.S. texts 'prove secret deal' Show Japan-U.S. agreement on Okinawa reversion, N-weapons.

     Japan and the United States reached a secret agreement to allow the United States to bring nuclear arms into Japanese territory in exchange for the return of the U.S.-occupied Okinawa islands in 1972, according to declassified U.S. government documents.

     The memorandums, bearing the dates of Nov. 12 and 13 in 1969, were discovered at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The documents were declassified in 2005 and recently discovered by Nihon University Prof. Takashi Shinobu.

     In his book, Kei Wakaizumi, an aide to former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato who was involved in secret talks with the United States on the return of Okinawa, mentioned the secret agreement between Sato and then U.S. President Richard Nixon to allow U.S. nuclear weapons into Japan. However, the recently discovered documents are the first U.S. official documents that prove the existence of the agreement.

     There is nothing surprising about this, after all if Japan wants to be shieled by America's nuclear umbrella then they have to be prepared to allow for the tools of that protection to be available to do so.  Really this is merely confirmation of something that everyone has known for a long time but this is the first written irrefutable proof that such an agreement was reached back in seventy two.

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