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TOKYO, Dec 13 (AFP) - US Ambassador to Japan Thomas Foley insisted the United States had stuck by its obligations to Japan in its nuclear weapons policy. A US report citing declassified Defense Department documents said the United States secretly stored nuclear weapons on two Japanese islands it occupied during the Cold War.
When asked about a US journal's report at the Japan Press Club, Foley said, "The United States is aware and has been always aware of the special sensitivities of the Japanese people regarding nuclear weapons. We have faithfully maintained our responsibilities and obligations under the US-Japan security treaty." The ambassador declined further comment.
A Japanese official at the foreign ministry's US-Japan security treaty division said, "The government will not comment on this matter as it is not appropriate to comment on a report by a private research institute," said an official at the foreign ministry's US-Japan security treaty division.
Japan, traumatized by the nuclear bombs that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, has maintained a policy of "no production, no possession and no introduction" of nuclear weapons since 1959.
However, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' report, there were nuclear weapons on both Chichi Jima and Iwo Jima islands, a nuclear arsenal on Okinawa Island and nuclear bombs without their fissile core on the Japanese mainland at Misawa and Itazuki airbases.
In addition, the US Navy had nuclear arms on ships stationed in the ports of Sasebo and Yokosuka, according to Monday's edition of the Bulletin, which is published by the Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization.
According to the recently declassified documents, the nuclear weapons stored secretly on Iwo Jima were removed at the end of 1959. The other island, Chichi Jima, "continued to house warheads with their nuclear materials until 1965."
"And Okinawa, of course, was chock-a-block full of nuclear weapons of all types until 1972," said the magazine. "Nuclear-armed ships moored at US Navy bases in Japan and others called at Japanese ports without restriction."
Aware of Japanese sensitivities, the Pentagon made accommodations to allow Japan's claims of nuclear-free status to be technically truthful. "Chichi Jima, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa were under US occupation ... The bombs stored on the mainland lacked their plutonium and/or uranium cores, and... the nuclear-armed ships were a legal inch away from Japanese soil," the US report said.
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