Former Foreign Ministry official testifies to the existence of Japan-U.S. secret agreements

Japan Press Weekly

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Former Foreign Ministry official testifies to the existence of Japan-U.S. secret agreements

A former senior Foreign Ministry official on December 1 testified in court to the existence of Japan-U.S. secret agreements, adding that he had himself signed a secret pact that stipulated that Japan would pay the costs regarding the 1972 reversion of Okinawa to Japan.

Yoshino Bunroku, 91, is the first government official to publicly admit to having been involved in the secret deal.

He gave this oral testimony during a court hearing in a lawsuit filed by journalists seeking the disclosure of the secret agreement Japan concluded with the United States that notes that Japan would shoulder the enormous amount of financial burdens associated with the return of Okinawa.

Declassified U.S. documents show that during negotiations with the United States on the reversion of Okinawa to Japan, Yoshino agreed with then Minister at the U.S. Embassy in Japan Richard Sneider that Japan would secretly pay about four million dollars for the restoration of Okinawan land and 16 million dollars for the relocation cost of the shortwave station Voice of America (VOA) although these two expenses should have been covered by the United States.

Referring to the payment of four million dollars, the 91-year-old former top Foreign Ministry official in court stated, “Yes, the initial ‘B.Y.’ on the bottom-left corner of this document is mine.” As for the document to force Japan to pay 16 million dollars for the cost needed to relocate the VOA facility, Yoshino also stated, “Yes, these are the signatures of Mr. Sneider and my own.”

Yoshino said that he had withheld this fact from the public because the money written in the secret deal had been included in the 320 million dollar amount that Japan had officially agreed to pay under the Japan-U.S. agreement concerning the return of Okinawa.

Successive Liberal Democratic Party governments have denied the existence of the secret pact.

Secret deal paved the way for Japan’s ‘sympathy budget’ for the stationing of U.S. forces in Japan

“I don’t know if my testimony has contributed to unraveling this history or not, but I told the truth,” said Yoshino.

His testimony has again brought to light the degree of U.S. high-handedness and Japan’s subservience.

No other country has ever paid such a huge amount of money to the United States to regain its territory from American military occupation.

As for the amount of money to be paid, Yoshino states, “At first, I opposed it because I thought it unnecessary, but as the fiscal situation in the United States got worse, I heard that the U.S. Congress was considering refusing to return Okinawa if Japan wasn’t willing to pay the cost for reversion.” He thus ended up accepting the U.S. demands, he explained.

What is more, Yoshino testified that the 320 million dollars Japan gave the United States was given without any requirements concerning accountability. “So, as a matter of fact, I don’t know how the money was used,” said Yoshino.

The secret pact Yoshino was involved in opened the door for the subsequent “sympathy budgets” to help pay for the stationing of U.S. forces in Japan.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should take his testimony seriously and make the facts known to the public in the report on the Japan-U.S. secret agreements scheduled to be released in January.

- Akahata, December 2, 2009