Hidden Crises and Secret Agreements: In Okinawa, The U.S. was on the Verge of Launching Nuclear Missiles
The U.S. military in Japan has caused at least three nuclear missile accidents. Nevertheless, the U.S. hoped to continue deploying atomic weapons in Japan.
Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo), a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, received the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee explained the Prize for "its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again."
Toshiyuki Mimaki, Nihon Hidankyo co-chair, stated, "We must continue appealing for the abolition of nuclear weapons." He also said, "I thought those who desperately save injured children in Gaza deserve it."
Although survivors of the two nuclear bombs, known in Japanese as "hibakusha," and the majority of Japanese people long for the abolition of atomic weapons, Japanese ports and airports are potentially and substantially the U.S. nuclear bases, as I wrote before. In addition, the U.S. can introduce nuclear missiles in Okinawa.
Okinawa, Japan's southernmost and westernmost prefecture, accounts for 0.6% of the Japanese area, but over 70% of the U.S. military bases in Japan are concentrated.
Japan lost World War II and had been occupied by the U.S. military. On September 8, 1951, 48 the Allies Powers and Japan signed a Peace Treaty, and on April 28, 1952, Japan restored its sovereignty, ending the legal state of war. However, the Peace Treaty Article 3 prescribed Okinawa remained under the U.S. ruling. Therefore, the U.S. had complete authority over Okinawa regarding legislation, administration, and judiciary until May 15, 1972.
In notes, which Washington and Tokyo exchanged when they revised the Security Treaty in 1960, they prescribed the U.S. must do prior consultation with Japan regarding major changes in their military equipment, including introducing nuclear weapons, but Okinawa was ineligible.
In 2016, the U.S. finally declassified the fact that it had stored nuclear weapons in controlled Okinawa. It was an open secret for decades because Japan's leaders and U.S. officials had consistently denied the presence of such weapons on Japanese territory. The U.S. introduced atomic weapons in Okinawa first in the middle of the 1950's. Also, at the peak of the Vietnam War, approximately 1300 nuclear weapons were stored in Okinawa. In addition, George Packard, Special Advisor to former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin Reischauer, said in 2010 that the U.S. military had brought nuclear weapons into the Japanese mainland freely.
In that time, at least twice, there were crises when atomic weapons were on the verge of being launched.
The first crisis occurred on June 19, 1959, on the Naha Airbase in Okinawa. A Nike Hercules missile equipped with a nuclear warhead was accidentally fired and fell into the sea. Robert Roepke, a former U.S. Army serviceman who worked in missile maintenance, provided his account. When training, a soldier made an error in handling, igniting the booster. The warhead power was 20 kilotons, more robust than the one dropped in Hiroshima. If the nuclear explosion had occurred, the town of Naha would have been blown off. However, the incident was kept secret; the U.S. military announced no details and recovered the missile from the ocean secretly, and those involved were forbidden to disclose anything about the accident.
In 1961, the U.S. deployed the Mace B (TM-76B) missiles, which loaded a nuclear warhead, in Okinawa's four sites: Bolo Point, White Beach, Ginbaru Training Area(Kin), and Onna.
Each site had eight missiles; therefore, 32 nuclear weapons ready to be launched existed in Okinawa. A warhead's power was 70 times more powerful than the one used in Hiroshima. Its range was over 2200 km(1,400 miles), and it could attack China and the far east of the Soviet Union.
According to a book titled "Why Japan Can Not Do Without Nuclear" by Masakatsu Ota, a senior staff writer at Kyodo News, another crisis occurred at daybreak on October 28, 1962, just before the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Former Air Force airman John Bordne said that at the height of Defense Readiness Condition 2, the next step to nuclear war, a commanding major at the Missile Operations Center on Kadena base in Okinawa gave a command by radio to launch nuclear missiles. All the codes matched, authenticating the instruction.
One target was the Soviet Union. However, three of the four targets were in other places. The missile site captain suggested making sure whether the command was correct or not. Bordne said the command to launch missiles had been mistakenly conveyed, though he didn't know why. In addition, the false command was also sent to another missile site in Okinawa. Another former U.S. veteran who served in Okinawa also confirmed Bordne's account on condition of anonymity.
A 1992 research paper titled "United States Air Force Ground Launched Cruise Missiles: A Study In Technology, Concepts, And Deterrence," written by Randall L. Lanning, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF, reads, "With 'Mace B,' key Chinese industrial complexes such as Chunking [Chongqing], Hankow, Shanghi [sic], and Beijing could be targeted. There was no other significant force in theater that offered this capability." The Mace B in Okinawa's three targets were in China.
Bordne told the same story at the U.N. event, and Aaron Tovish published a column about this crisis in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. However, a daily American military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, ran an article that doubted the reliability of Bordne's account. The Air Force must disclose the entire history of the nuclear missile units on Okinawa to bring to light the facts of the most crucial incident. Still, the Stars and Stripes article mentioned a view of Scott Sagan, a professor of political science at Stanford University, "If the incident is mentioned in the [squadron's operational] history that would obviously be strong confirmation, but if it is not, we can't assume that is a strong disconfirmation since embarrassing events are sometimes covered up."
In 1965, the U.S. lost maybe two nuclear bombs. A Douglas A-4 Skyhawk aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon fell into the sea off the coast of Amami, near Okinawa, from the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga. The aircraft and nuclear bombs sank deep into the ocean and were never recovered. In 1989, the U.S. finally admitted this accident.
In the controlled Okinawa, the U.S. had been exposing Okinawans and the world to danger secretly.
However, in November 1967, Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, who received the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize, held talks with U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, appealing the reversion of Okinawa. One month after that, Sato declared the three non-nuclear principles: not to own nuclear weapons, neither to produce nor to allow them into the country. On March 10, 1969, he stated that the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty would apply to Okinawa after reversion. It meant that the U.S. could not introduce nuclear weapons into Okinawa without prior consultation, and Japan would decline it.
Sato longed for the reversion of Okinawa without nuclear weapons, but the U.S., especially its military, hoped for the maintenance of nuclear weapons in Okinawa. Therefore, Nixon and Sato signed a secret agreement on November 21, 1969. Japanese professor at Kyoto Sangyo University, Kei Wakaizumi, negotiated with the U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger as an emissary, and they drew up the 1969 joint statement and the secret Agreed Minute.
In the secret Agreed Minute, the U.S. President stated, "In time of great emergency, the United States Government will require the re-entry of nuclear weapons and transit rights in Okinawa with prior consultation with the Government of Japan. The United States Government would anticipate a favorable response."
The Minute read Washington "also requires the standby retention and activation in time of great emergency of existing nuclear storage locations in Okinawa: Kadena, Naha, Henoko and Nike Hercules units." Tokyo promised to "meet these requirements without delay when such prior consultation takes place."
In the 1969 joint statement, Nixon and Sato officially decided to restore Okinawa in 1972. They promised the removal of nuclear weapons and the maintenance of the U.S. bases in Okinawa. On June 17, 1971, Washington and Tokyo signed the Okinawa Reversion Agreement, which took effect on May 15, 1972.
Wakaizumi exposed the secret agreement in his book "The Best Course Available: A Personal Account of the Secret U.S. - Japan Okinawa Reversion Negotiations," published in 1994. Wakaizumi's account was confirmed by the Minute found in the house of Sato in 2009 and the Japanese government's 2010 investigation of secret agreements. Though the Japanese administration concluded that the agreement was no longer valid, a former senior U.S. Department of Defense officer, Morton Halperin, who was involved in negotiating the reversion, said in 2018 that "the secret agreement is valid still."
Wakaizumi had felt responsible for Okinawa because their burden had not been alleviated, and they had suffered a lot of U.S. soldiers' crimes. On July 27, 1996, after he finished the manuscript of the English version of his book, Wakabayashi committed suicide at the age of 66. He took responsibility in his own way. A lot of U.S. military bases have remained in Okinawa and other Japanese territories, and a lot of U.S. soldiers commit crimes.
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