US Navy LST with nuclear weapons deployed to Iwakuni in 1960s

A newly-found U.S. government document has shown that a U.S. Navy landing ship carrying nuclear weapons had been deployed off the U.S. Marine Corps Iwakuni Air Station in Yamaguchi Prefecture from 1959 to 1966, and that the then Japanese government had been informed of this fact. The LST is identified as the U.S. Navy San Joaquin County, according to the document.

So far, some U.S. government officials have testified that the Japanese government had given "tacit approval" to the U.S. notice that the Iwakuni-deployed LST was armed with nuclear weapons. A newly discovered document confirmed this.

The declassified document is a secret telegram the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Wheeler sent to the U.S. Pacific Command Commander Sharp dated May 13, 1966. Niihara Shoji, specialist to the nuclear weapons issue with the Association for a Non-nuclear Government, obtained the document at the U.S. National Security Archive.

The telegram is entitled "Report on talks with Ambassador Reischauer," which is in part as follows:

"Embassy Staff Tokyo was aware of arrangements concerning USS SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY, as also were GOJ reps in Mutual Defense Treaty negotiations."

In its note, it added that "latter knowledge" of representatives of the Japanese government was "kept carefully off the record at GOJ insistence."

Akahata on August 1 stated that the document confirmed that "Japanese representatives to negotiations on the Japan-U.S. mutual defense treaty" had been informed of the fact that the U.S. LST had nuclear weapons, and the "mutual defense treaty" indicates the current Japan-U.S. Security Treaty of 1960.

Commenting on the document, Niihara said:

"These facts indicate how deeply the Japanese Government led by Liberal Democratic Party had been involved in the U.S. policy to use Japan as its sortie base with nuclear weapons.

"The U.S. government at that time secretly deployed the nuclear-armed LST for a long time as a step toward a full-time deployment of nuclear weapons to U.S. ground bases in Japan. However, the Japanese government silently approved this, while it was fully aware of the anti-nuclear weapons sentiment of the Japanese people.

"This means the Japanese government was an accomplice to the U.S. attempt to make Japan a nuclear weapons sortie base," Niihara stressed. (end)