Japan to come clean on secret nuke deals with US

[FarCenter]

By YURI KAGEYAMA -- Associated Press Writer

TOKYO (AP) -- To the government's critics, it was a long and shocking act of official stonewalling: Agreements long hidden in Foreign Ministry files allowed nuclear-armed U.S. warships to enter Japanese ports, violating a hallowed principle of postwar Japan. Yet their very existence was officially denied.

Now, in a clear break from the past, a new prime minister has gone where none of his predecessors dared go: He has ordered a panel of ministry officials and academics to investigate the secret agreements.

The findings, due out this month, are part of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's wide-ranging campaign to wrest power from the bureaucracy and make government more open than under the conservatives, who ruled Japan for most of the past 50 years.

They also could intensify public debate about the future of Japan's long-standing security alliance with the U.S., which has bases here. Hatoyama, a liberal who took office in September, has called for making the relationship more balanced, starting with efforts to evict an unpopular U.S. base from the island of Okinawa.

That Japan agreed to let nuclear-armed ships enter its ports and waters ceased to be a secret some years ago with the declassification of American documents. Such ships had routinely docked in various Japanese ports since the 1960s, sometimes setting off protests.

But in a nation where memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki drive a fierce aversion to nuclear weapons, a formal admission of the secret agreements would be a stunning reversal, and confirm that previous governments systematically lied to the public.

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[Vinnie From Indy]

1. I would bet that Japan has some nuclear secrets of her own.

I think it is likely that Japan has had the ability to very quickly assemble their own nuclear weapons should that have ever been needed for decades. That is if they do not have a few ready to go right now. Just a guess, but I find it inconceivable that the Japanese have not produced even a theoretical bomb design of their own.