Joseph Gerson wrote this letter to the editor of the Boston Globe commenting on its article about the Nuclear Posture Review currently underway:

Dear Editor,

Brian Bender’s article “Obama presses review of nuclear strategy” contains misstatements of fact, makes no reference to essential context of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, and misses the focus on the Nuclear Posture Review debate: “modernization” on “no first use.”

Bender mistakenly claims that current treaty negotiations with Russia would reduce the number of each side’s warheads to between 1,500 and 2,200, and that Obama may recommend cutting the U.S. arsenal to 1,000. The negotiations are about deployed strategic nuclear warheads, not the hundreds of deployed tactical nuclear weapons, most of which are more destructive than the Hiroshima A- Bomb. More, the negotiations and proposals do not address the roughly 16,000 nuclear warheads in the superpowers’ stockpiles.

The article reports that bombers can “use nuclear weapons to help defuse a possible crisis.” In fact, since the A-bombing of Nagasaki, on more than 40 occassions U.S. presidents have prepared or threatened to initiate nuclear war. These threats, and the refusal of the nuclear powers to fulfill their NPT Article VI obligation to negotiate the elimination of their nuclear arsenals are driving nuclear weapons proliferation. Recognizing this danger, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Barack Obama and others have urged the U.S. to reduce the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and to reaffirm its Article VI commitment.

These disarmament steps, including the negotiations with Russia that will leave the two powers with more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, are seen as essential if the U.S. is to regain necessary diplomatic leverage needed to use this May’s NPT Review Conference to prevent break outs by Iran and other near-nuclear nations.

If Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review reiterates a first-strike policy or if he and Congress authorize “modernization” – production – of new genocidal nuclear weapons, the obvious hypocrisy will jeopardize the NPT and vastly increase the nuclear dangers.

Finally, why is Moscow not talking about abolition? Because, as Mikhail Gorbachev warned, with U.S. high-tech weapons and its campaign to monopolize the militarization of space, Russian leaders believe they need a deterrent force to prevent repetitions of U.S. Cold War nuclear blackmail.

President Obama has stated his commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons. It’s time to walk that talk.

Dr. Joseph Gerson

Disarmament Coordinator – American Friends Service Committee

Author, Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-obama-nuclear4-2010jan04,0,2198537,full.story

Obama’s nuclear-free vision mired in debate

Pentagon officials have pushed back against the president’s goals to shrink the U.S. stockpile and reduce the role of such weapons in foreign policy, sources say.

By Paul Richter

January 4, 2010

Reporting from Washington – President Obama’s ambitious plan to begin phasing out nuclear weapons has run up against powerful resistance from officials in the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies, posing a threat to one of his most important foreign policy initiatives.

Obama laid out his vision of a nuclear-free world in a speech in Prague, Czech Republic, last April, pledging that the U.S. would take dramatic steps to lead the way. Nine months later, the administration is locked in internal debate over a top-secret policy blueprint for shrinking the U.S. nuclear arsenal and reducing the role of such weapons in America’s military strategy and foreign policy.

Officials in the Pentagon and elsewhere have pushed back against Obama administration proposals to cut the number of weapons and narrow their mission, according to U.S. officials and outsiders who have been briefed on the process.

In turn, White House officials, unhappy with early Pentagon-led drafts of the blueprint known as the Nuclear Posture Review, have stepped up their involvement in the deliberations and ordered that the document reflect Obama’s preference for sweeping change, according to the U.S. officials and others, who described discussions on condition of anonymity because of their sensitivity and secrecy.

The Pentagon has stressed the importance of continued U.S. deterrence, an objective Obama has said he agrees with. But a senior Defense official acknowledged in an interview that some officials are concerned that the administration may be going too far. He described the debate as “spirited. . . . I think we have every possible point of view in the world represented.”

The debate represents another collision between Obama’s administration and key parts of the national security establishment, after scrapes over troop levels in Afghanistan and missile defenses in Eastern Europe.

But more than those issues, the future of U.S. nuclear weapons policy is directly tied to a series of initiatives Obama has advanced as a prime goal of his presidency.

“This is the first test of Obama’s nuclear commitments,” said former U.S. Ambassador Nancy E. Soderberg, who held senior foreign policy positions in the Clinton administration. “They can’t afford to fall short at the outset.”

Congress called for the nuclear review, the third such study since the end of the Cold War, placing the Pentagon in charge. Similar reviews were conducted near the beginning of the Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations, but Obama’s is the first in which substantial changes stand to be made both in the number of U.S. nuclear weapons and in how they are used.

The government maintains an estimated 9,400 nuclear weapons, about 1,000 fewer than in 2002. But Obama believes that stepping up efforts to reduce the stockpile will give U.S. officials added credibility in their quest to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the cornerstone international arms-control pact.

The timing of the administration debate on the nuclear review is crucial, because a key international meeting on the treaty is planned for May in New York.

Also looming this year are other elements of Obama’s nuclear agenda, including renewal of an arms-reduction treaty with Russia and a push for Senate ratification of a global ban on nuclear testing.

The nonproliferation treaty has been weakened in recent years by the spread of nuclear technologies to countries such as North Korea, Pakistan and Iran. But nonnuclear countries are wary of intrusive new rules, arguing that though the United States preaches nuclear arms control to others, it has failed to live up to its own promises to disarm.

For Obama, the stakes are high. The difficulties posed by challenges in Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea and the Middle East underscore the need for progress on arms control.

Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in part because of expectations that he would make good on his pledge to reduce the nuclear threat.

Obama would not be the first president to suffer setbacks on nuclear policy at the hands of politics and the U.S. bureaucracy. President Clinton and Defense Secretary Les Aspin had ambitious plans to overhaul nuclear policy. But their 1994 review quickly bogged down in internal disagreement, and ended largely by preserving the status quo.

Obama has vowed to move toward abolishing American nuclear weapons, but has acknowledged that the process may not be completed in his lifetime.

The president told world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September that his administration would soon set out a new nuclear posture policy statement that “opens the door to deeper cuts and reduces the role of nuclear weapons.”

But the process of doing so in Washington has encountered difficulty on several scores, according to those who described the talks.

A core issue under debate, officials said, is whether the United States should shed its long-standing ambiguity about whether it would use nuclear weapons in certain circumstances, in hopes that greater specificity would give foreign governments more confidence to make their own decisions on nuclear arms.

Some in the U.S. argue that the administration should assure foreign governments that it won’t use nuclear weapons in reaction to a biological, chemical or conventional attack, but only in a nuclear exchange. Others argue that the United States should promise that it would never use nuclear weapons first, but only in response to a nuclear attack.

Pentagon officials question the value of such public declarations, contending that foreign governments may not even believe them, said the U.S. officials and others.

During the Cold War, Soviet officials declared that they would use nuclear weapons only in response to a nuclear attack. But when Soviet archives were opened, it became clear that “there were scenarios where they would have contemplated first use,” said Charles Ferguson, a former State Department official who now heads the Federation of American Scientists.

The lingering skepticism that resulted could carry over to similar U.S. declarations, limiting their worth, some officials have argued.

A “no-first-use” policy may represent a bigger step than the Obama administration would be willing to take, private analysts said.

Instead, they think the administration might hedge its policy by saying, for instance, that the United States would use nuclear weapons only in situations that threatened its existence.

Another issue being debated is how to scale back the U.S. stockpile while continuing to provide nuclear protection to allies, in part to keep them from developing their own nuclear arsenals. The U.S. maintains hundreds of nuclear weapons overseas for such purposes.

For instance, some U.S. submarines in the Pacific carry nuclear-tipped torpedoes, which, Ferguson said, many Japanese officials like for their possible deterrent effect against a growing Chinese navy. Because nuclear weapons provide such assurance to a key ally, some U.S. officials are reluctant to cut back on the capability.

For similar reasons, some U.S. officials want to keep about 200 U.S. bombs at European bases, providing security for Eastern European countries.

Another debate is whether the U.S. needs three major delivery systems for its nuclear weapons — long-range missiles, submarines and bombers. But eliminating one of them would face strong resistance from the affected military services and the lawmakers who support them.

The senior Defense official said the nuclear posture debate centers on the different ways toward the twin goals of nonproliferation and deterrence.

“We are not looking at whether to reduce the roles of nuclear weapons and whether to reduce [their numbers],” he said.

“We’re looking at how.”

paul.richter@latimes.com

Julian E. Barnes in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.

The U.S. and South Korea plan to draft a military guidelines similar to the U.S. – Japan mutual cooperation agreement.  The pact will include provisions to ensure a “U.S. nuclear umbrella for South Korea and the stable presence of U.S. forces in Korea.”

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http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/12/205_57393.html

12-16-2009 18:07

S. Korea, US to Draw Up Defense Guidelines

By Jung Sung-ki

Staff Reporter

South Korea and the United States are discussing a plan to draw up “defense guidelines” next year in a bid to upgrade bilateral defense cooperation, according to defense and foreign ministry officials Wednesday.

The guidelines, similar to the U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines established in 1996, would include key measures to strengthen military cooperation between the two, they said.

Among the topics are U.S. reinforcement plans in case of a war on the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. nuclear umbrella for South Korea and the stable presence of U.S. forces in Korea.

“The defense guidelines will be part of follow-up measures to materialize the Korea-U.S. alliance joint vision adopted at the summit between Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Barack Obama,” an official at the Ministry of National Defense said. “The guidelines will include a comprehensive package of measures on how the two nations are to cooperate in the event of war on the peninsula.”

In the summit meeting in Washington, D.C., Obama said the U.S. government would provide an extended nuclear umbrella to South Korea in response to increasing nuclear threats from the North.

Lee and Obama adopted a “joint vision for the ROK-US alliance” that calls for building a broader, strategic partnership in the realms of politics, economy, culture and other areas beyond the security arena.

In the Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) in Seoul, Oct. 22, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates confirmed the increased defense cooperation with South Korea. In a joint communique issued at the end of the annual meeting, Gates reaffirmed “the U.S. commitment to provide extended deterrence for the ROK, using the full range of military capabilities, to include the U.S. nuclear umbrella, conventional strike and missile defense capabilities.”

It was the first time that detailed plans of increased U.S. deterrence capabilities for South Korea had been revealed and even stipulated in a joint statement since 2006, when the then-defense ministers from both nations first addressed the issue.

Notably, Gates said the United States would use its capabilities not only on the peninsula but also “globally available U.S. forces and capabilities that are strategically flexible to deploy to augment the combined defense in case of crisis.”

Previously, the U.S. military had only referred to reinforcement of troops from the U.N. Command’s rear bases in Japan in case of an emergency.

Observers said Gates’ remarks were construed as a response to a lingering concern here that the 2012 transition of wartime operational control (OPCON) of South Korean troops from the U.S. military to Korean commanders will result in a smaller role of the U.S. military on the peninsula, and that it could tip the military balance between the two Koreas.

Under a 2007 deal on command rearrangements, the U.S. military on the peninsula is to shift to an air- and naval-centric supporting role with the South Korean military taking over main combat operations in the event of conflicts.

The ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC) is to be deactivated and two separate theater commands of both militaries will be put in place here.

Speaking at a forum in the United States, CFC Commander Gen. Walter Sharp said the U.S. and Korean militaries have agreed to develop a single joint operational plan even after the OPCON transition. Both sides have already worked out an initial version of the operational plan and will complete the final one soon, he added.

gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr

The Democratic Party of Japan, the new ruling party that broke 60 years of conservative party domination, will reveal details of a secret agreement between Japan and the U.S. that allowed the U.S. military to bring nuclear weapons into Japan despite an explicit prohibition under Japanese law.  Ralph A. Cossa, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Pacific Forum reacted to this announcement by saying:  “This is not the type of issue your closest ally forces you to confront publicly…At a minimum, it adds unnecessary friction to the alliance and makes U.S. ship visits, which are now routine, once again a source of contention and a rallying point for protest.”

Actually, secretly bringing in nuclear weapons to the only country that was nuked in war is not the kind of issue you force your closest ally to accept.   And if there is anything adding “unnecessary friction” it would be the enormous U.S. military presence and its arrogant behavior in the region, i.e. destruction of an entire farming village in Pyeongtaek, S. Korea to make way for the expansion of a U.S. base, the proposed destruction of Henoko to expand Camp Schwab, the military inundation of Guam and the Northern Marianas despite the smothering impact this will have on Chamoru people, counter-insurgency disguised as “training” in Mindanao.   It’s the imperial conduct and secrecy of the U.S. that causes unnecessary friction, not the disclosure of the truth.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/24/AR2009112401922.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Japan says it will soon release details of nuclear pact with U.S.

Though existence of accord was known, move puts strain on ties

By Blaine Harden

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

TOKYO — Japan’s new government, already bickering with the United States about the location of a Marine air station on Okinawa, appears intent on revealing evidence of a decades-old secret pact between Tokyo and Washington that allowed U.S. ships and aircraft to carry nuclear weapons on stopovers in Japan.

Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said that the investigation is in its final stages and that its findings will be announced in January. “We’ll be unburdening ourselves of the insistence of past governments that a secret agreement did not exist,” Okada said in a speech last weekend.

The pact violates a Japanese law that prohibits nuclear weapons from being made, possessed or stored on its territory. But disclosure of the 1960s-era agreement is hardly new. In general outline, its existence has been known for years because of declassified U.S. government documents.

Still, the Tokyo government’s insistence on an official investigation of the matter has placed new strain on U.S.-Japanese relations.

“This is not the type of issue your closest ally forces you to confront publicly,” said Ralph A. Cossa, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Pacific Forum, a think tank in Honolulu. “At a minimum, it adds unnecessary friction to the alliance and makes U.S. ship visits, which are now routine, once again a source of contention and a rallying point for protest.”

When Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates visited Japan last month, he reportedly told Japan’s defense minister not to allow the investigation of the agreement to hurt bilateral relations or weaken U.S. nuclear deterrence. The U.S. government is treaty-bound to defend Japan in case of attack, and it has about 36,000 military personnel based here.

The traditionally close U.S.-Japan alliance has been knocked off balance in recent months by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s insistence that Japan be more assertive in controlling the heavy footprint of U.S. military forces on its soil.

During President Obama’s recent visit to Japan, he and Hatoyama agreed to create a working group of high-level officials from their countries to resolve a dispute over the location of the Futenma Marine air station in Okinawa. Noise and pollution from the base annoy local residents.

But the leaders have since disagreed over what the working group is supposed to do. Obama says it should focus only on implementing a three-year-old agreement to allow the air station to be relocated on Okinawa. Hatoyama says it must be able to do much more or else it is “meaningless.” He has said he wants the air station moved off Okinawa or outside Japan.

The dispute over the air station has become a highly publicized symbol of Japan’s new forcefulness in negotiations with its most important ally. It is also an early political test of the leadership ability of Hatoyama and his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).

To an even greater degree, Japan’s probe of the secret nuclear pact with the United States is as much symbol as substance.

In part, that is because the pact is now moot: Both governments say U.S. vessels no longer bring nuclear weapons into Japan.

But disclosing its existence has a clear political upside for the DPJ, which won a crushing victory in recent lower-house parliamentary elections and is preparing for another election in the upper house in the summer.

Publicity about the pact is almost certain to embarrass the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which until this fall had ruled Japan as a virtual one-party state for nearly half a century and quietly decided in the 1960s to ignore the law when nuclear-armed U.S. ships entered Japanese ports.

The LDP’s policy research council has said that full disclosure of diplomatic agreements “does not necessarily guarantee the protection of national interest.”

Yet there may well be a political price to pay. There is a profound populist antipathy to nuclear weapons in Japan. The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, killing about 220,000 people.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/30-4

Published on Friday, October 30, 2009 by The Japan Times Online

Hiroshima Beckons Obama

by John Einarsen

For the past 64 years the name “Hiroshima” has conjured a nightmare vision for all humanity: the unthinkable specter of instantaneous atomic annihilation. Only by personally visiting Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the two cities that have experienced atomic bombing, can one begin to grasp the threat posed by the world’s present arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Just one bomb, dubbed “Little Boy,” devastated Hiroshima in a split second. By comparison, the potential destructive power of the more than 20,000 nuclear warheads deployed or stockpiled today by the United States, Russia, France, Britain, China, Israel, India and Pakistan gives bizarre new meaning to the term “overkill” — and proliferation continues.

Under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the U.S. puts nuclear weapons in the hands of Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Israel is widely believed to have its own arsenal, North Korea has a test program, and R&D in Iran and reportedly Myanmar threatens to further destabilize already volatile regions.

Today, who does not fear even a single atomic bomb in terrorist hands?

While Hiroshima illuminates the world’s darkest forebodings, it is also a beacon of hope — a witness reminding us at every opportunity that nuclear weapons must never again be used. Hiroshima’s citizens stand certain in their knowledge of what the “atomic option” really means, and insist that our planet must be nuclear-free, a truth beyond politics or the ideology of nationalism.

This message is now global: Mayors for Peace, a Hiroshima/Nagasaki- initiated international network of local authorities campaigning for the elimination by 2020 of all remaining nuclear weapons, is supported by more than 3,000 cities in 134 countries and regions. Every visitor to Hiroshima and its Peace Museum comes face to face with a history from which we must all learn — or risk repeating.

Who better to visit Hiroshima, witness its message firsthand, and speak to the world’s nuclear fears, than the commander in chief of one of the world’s largest nuclear-equipped militaries?

Now, as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Japan on Nov. 12 and 13 offers him an unprecedented opportunity to build already-established momentum toward the abolition of nuclear weapons.

If Obama were to speak from Hiroshima (as no other sitting U.S. president ever has), this would allow the entire world to imagine a future no longer held hostage by fears of cold war, nuclear winter, or nuclear terrorism. As Obama has stated, political will and support for a nuclear-free world first requires imagination. An address from Hiroshima would be bold, historic and compelling.

Obama’s groundbreaking April 5 speech in Prague — mentioned by many speakers at memorial events in Nagasaki and Hiroshima this past summer and widely reported in the Japanese media — shows just how closely attuned he is to the essence of Hiroshima’s viewpoint:

“Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city — be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague — could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be — for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival.

“Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked — that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.”

Obama showed his determination to confront this vital issue Sept. 24 by chairing a head-of-state U.N. Security Council session that unanimously passed an unprecedented resolution for the abolition of nuclear weapons worldwide. As yet, Hiroshima is not known to be on the U.S. president’s November Japan itinerary. He already has, however, received an open invitation from Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, thousands of Hiroshima’s schoolchildren and many hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors).

Such a visit would be well-timed: It would appeal to Japan’s eagerly progressive new administration, which has just swept the country’s long-dominant conservative Liberal Democratic Party out of office. It would signify to the international community that the U.S. once again embraces a more farsighted and responsible role in international diplomacy.

It would demonstrate at a crucial juncture that the U.S. recognizes the horrific potential of nuclear weaponry (as President Harry Truman showed in his restraint during the Korean War) and is ready to join others, both in Japan and worldwide, in making much-needed efforts to eliminate that threat.

A November “Hiroshima Address” need not dwell on the circumstances of the past. More constructively, it could affirm the potential for everyone to learn from Hiroshima’s experience and move decisively toward a nuclear-free future. Here is an opportunity to truly change history, dwarfing even U.S. President Richard Nixon’s journey to China — an embodiment of “the audacity of hope,” to which millions around the world have responded, and still yearn for.

President Obama, fulfill the promise of your Nobel Peace Prize — speak to the world from Hiroshima!

© 2009 Japan Times

John Einarsen, a Kyoto resident, served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, and is the founding editor of the international quarterly Kyoto Journal (www.kyotojournal.org ).

Despite Japan’s pacifist constitution and aversion to nuclear weapons, the U.S. and Japan reached  a secret deal in the 1960s that allowed U.S. nuclear weapons into port and select locations.   The new government in Japan is now investigating these secret agreements.   Check out the National Security Archive for more background on this issue.

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October 23, 2009

Japan Probes 1960s Nuclear Agreements With U.S.

Tokyo Leadership, Seeking Break With Past, Holds Fact-Finding Mission Into Once-Secret Pacts; Gates Warns of Damage to Ties

By YUKA HAYASHI

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125623748164901865.html

TOKYO — U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates cautioned Japan this week against letting a fact-finding mission into decades-old secret nuclear-weapons agreements affect relations between the two countries, according to an official familiar with the matter.

In a meeting with Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa on Wednesday, Mr. Gates said Japan also should avoid letting the probe hurt the U.S.’s antinuclear-proliferation efforts, the official said. Mr. Kitazawa said the government would handle confidential information sensitively, said the official.

Japan, the only nation that has endured nuclear attacks, forbids making, possessing and storing nuclear weapons on its soil. But under an understanding reached in the early 1960s, Japan agreed to look the other way when nuclear-armed U.S. ships used Japanese ports. A 1969 agreement allowed nuclear weapons to be stationed in emergency cases on U.S. bases on the island of Okinawa, after it was returned to Japanese control in 1972.

Many elements of the agreements have been disclosed previously. Both governments say the agreements no longer have teeth because nuclear-armed U.S. vessels no longer stop in Japan.

But Japan’s new government, now controlled by the Democratic Party of Japan after August elections, has launched a fact-finding investigation to make the agreements public and show how they were kept secret.

“In the past, prime ministers and foreign ministers of this country repeatedly denied the existence of the secret agreements and that eroded the public’s trust in the government’s foreign policy,” said Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada.

Political analysts say the investigation is a largely symbolic move to show a change from governments run by the Liberal Democratic Party, which dominated Japanese politics for more than half a century, until last month.

“The DPJ wants to send a message to people that they have a new government with a different political style,” said Norihiko Narita, president of Surugadai University and an informal political adviser to the DPJ.

The LDP said some secrecy was necessary. “Full disclosure of information on diplomatic negotiations doesn’t necessarily guarantee the protection of national interest,” the party’s Policy Research Council said in a statement. “In conducting foreign policy, we always made our national interest and the well-being of our citizens the top priority, and disclosed what we could.”

The investigation comes as the DPJ reviews Japan’s overall foreign policy with a goal of giving Tokyo an equal role in its close bilateral ties with the U.S. Some experts say the probe seeks to discredit Japanese officials who had worked closely with Washington.

U.S. officials play down the potential impact of the investigation, saying the agreements are now out in the open and it is a domestic matter. “It is up to the Japanese government how they want to explore this,” said Kurt Campbell, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs.

The investigation has created a buzz in Japan, where the secret agreements were long discussed but always officially denied. “I am very much looking forward to the DPJ showing us what we couldn’t see before,” said Masaaki Ota, a 42-year-old Tokyo flower-shop owner who supports the DPJ.

While the agreements have been something of an open secret in Japan, U.S. government documents concerning them have been gradually declassified for years. After the DPJ began the fact-finding mission, George Washington University Professor Robert Wampler posted online a package of relevant documents from university archives.

One 1969 memorandum by Jeanne Davis of the National Security Council to members of the Nixon administration discusses nuclear-weapons policy in Okinawa after the handover back to Japan. One option: “Japn [sic] now acquiesces in transit by naval vessels armed with nuclear weapons. This right would extend automatically to Okinawa. (This is sensitive and closely held information).”

Another 1969 memo, by U.S. Ambassador to Japan Alexis Johnson, describes an exchange with Japanese Foreign Minister Kiichi Aichi regarding the deployment and storage of nuclear weapons in Okinawa. “He said that [then Prime Minister Eisaku] Sato and we were, in event of renewal of hostilities in Korea, absolutely determined to implement this secret understanding and give full support to our actions in Korea,” Ambassador Johnson quoted the foreign minister as saying.

Write to Yuka Hayashi at yuka.hayashi@wsj.com