U.S. Wanted Right to Return Nuclear Weapons to Okinawa in 1969

June 22, 2018

Washington- The United States wanted the right to return nuclear weapons to Okinawa before it agreed in 1969 to hand the region back to Japan, documents disclosed by the State Department have revealed.

Under a so-called secret agreement said to have been reached between then Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato and U.S. President Richard Nixon, Tokyo gave Washington the right to bring nuclear weapons back into Okinawa in the case of an emergency even after the region had reverted to Japanese rule.

In a memorandum dated March 12, 1969, and addressed to Nixon, his national security adviser Henry Kissinger said, "The loss of Okinawan nuclear storage would degrade our nuclear capabilities in the Pacific." He wrote that such loss was a point of major concern to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Okinawa, currently Japan's southernmost prefecture, came under U.S. occupation following World War II. Sato and Nixon, in their meeting in November 1969, agreed on the region's reversion to Japanese rule in 1972.

Kissinger said in the memorandum that the United States had "several options" to take if it agreed to withdraw its nuclear arsenal from Okinawa.

Citing the right to return nuclear weapons to Okinawa as one of the options, he said, "This would be helpful should there be a serious threat of nuclear hostilities in Asia, but the arrangement would have to be highly secret."

Information about other such options remains classified.

A memorandum on a meeting of senior U.S. government and congressional officials on Nov. 21, 1969, after the Sato-Nixon summit, showed that Gen. Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Joint Chiefs preferred a status quo situation over nuclear weapons in Okinawa.

"If the status quo were not possible, they would like to have seen specific language in the Communique providing for emergency re-entrance and transit rights," Wheeler said.

He added that he was glad to see that the communique contained language that would have the effect of preserving these rights.

Although it is unclear which communique Wheeler was referring to, the presence of agreed minutes signed by Sato and Nixon has been confirmed. The minutes touch on the re-entrance and transit rights.

In 2010, however, a panel of experts at the Japanese Foreign Ministry concluded that the minutes do not constitute a secret agreement on nuclear re-entrance. Jiji Press