Documents confirm 1959 Japan-U.S. secret meeting over court case

Did the U.S. interfere with the outcome of a trespass case in Japan where in 1959 protesters were accused of trespassing on a U.S. military base slated for expansion?  After a district court in Tokyo acquitted the protesters on the grounds that the U.S. bases were unconstitutional, secret meetings took place between the U.S. and Japanese governments. The Japanese Supreme Court later overturned the lower court ruling.   The Japanese government has long denied the existence of any documents related to these meetings, but recently one of the former defendants in the case received documents from the secret meeting from the government.

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http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100403p2a00m0na007000c.html

Documents confirm 1959 Japan-U.S. secret meeting over court case

In a drastic turnaround, the Foreign Ministry has acknowledged the existence of documents on a secret meeting between Japan and the United States following a 1959 court decision that ruled the U.S. military’s presence in Japan unconstitutional.

The ministry disclosed the documents to one of the former defendants in the so-called Sunagawa Case, in which anti-base demonstrators accused of trespassing on a U.S. military base in western Tokyo were acquitted after a court ruled the base unconstitutional. The decision was later overturned by the Supreme Court and the defendants convicted.

Shortly after the initial ruling, the then U.S. ambassador to Japan met with the Japanese foreign minister and the Supreme Court chief justice, but the Foreign Ministry had denied there were any documents left regarding the meetings.

The latest revelation underscores the ministry’s reluctance to comply with the principle of information disclosure, following a recent finding that the ministry may have discarded some of the important documents related to secret pacts made between Japan and the United States during the Cold War.

The documents related to the secret bilateral meeting over the Sunagawa Case were disclosed on Friday evening to Shigeru Sakata, 80, a resident of Kawasaki, who along with 40 supporters had filed a request for their disclosure following the change of regime in September last year.

“We need to scrutinize the content (of the documents), but it’s a step forward,” said Sakata.

Sakata is among the former defendants accused of trespassing on a U.S. military base in Tachikawa, Tokyo, while they staged a protest against the base’s expansion in July 1957. Out of the 23 demonstrators who were arrested in September the same year seven were indicted, but all were acquitted by the Tokyo District Court in March 1959 after the court ruled the U.S military’s presence unconstitutional. However, prosecutors appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which overturned the lower court decision in December 1959.

Since the Supreme Court decision came shortly before the January 1960 revision to the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, suspicions were raised that Tokyo and Washington rushed to settle the case by annulling the lower court decision ahead of the bilateral security arrangement amendments.

In April 2008, it emerged through U.S. official documents that then U.S. Ambassador to Japan Douglas MacArthur II met with Japanese Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama over the district court ruling and urged Tokyo to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. The U.S. documents also revealed that MacArthur discussed the timetable of the appeals hearing with then Supreme Court chief justice Kotaro Tanaka.

Sakata and others filed a request for the disclosure of information over the issue in March last year, but the Justice Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, the Cabinet Office and the Supreme Court all replied by May last year that there were no documents regarding the meetings with the U.S. ambassador.

Following the change of government in September last year, the petitioners once again filed a request for information disclosure in October, after Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada ordered a survey into Japan-U.S. secret pacts on the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan and other issues. Although the Justice Ministry, the Cabinet Office and the Supreme Court insisted on nondisclosure in November, the Foreign Ministry pledged to “continue to investigate the case” while saying they “could not identify the documents at this moment” in its reply on Dec. 25.

The documents that were disclosed to Sakata on Friday evening came in 34 pages, handwritten and sealed as “confidential,” and are titled “minutes from a meeting between Minister Fujiyama and the U.S. ambassador in Tokyo.” The meeting took place in April 1959, only two days after the Tokyo District Court ruling. Lawyers and others from a group supporting Sakata will analyze the details of the documents.

Gentaro Tsuchiya, 75, a resident of Shizuoka and another former defendant of the Sunagawa Case, said: “Due to the heightened public attention on the bilateral secret pacts issue, the Foreign Ministry may have had no choice but to give serious consideration (to the disclosure of the documents).”