[/floatl]AP: Anti-nuke ex-Japanese PM asked US for nuclear strike on China
Japan asked the United States in 1965 to be ready to attack China with nuclear weapons if the two Asian powers went to war, newly declassified documents said Monday. Japan, the only nation to have suffered atomic attack, has long campaigned to abolish nuclear weapons -- principles that led former prime minister Eisaku Sato to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974. But the foreign ministry declassified documents showing Sato sought a US nuclear strike on China in the event of a war between the two countries. According to the diplomatic papers, Sato told then US defence secretary Robert McNamara at a 1965 meeting in Washington: "We expect the United States to retaliate immediately using nuclear weapons" in a war. McNamara, best known as an architect of the Vietnam War, was quoted as replying only that the United States had the technical capability to deploy nuclear weapons overseas. Sato also said that he would let the United States use Japanese waters, although not its territory, to transport nuclear weapons in the event of a war between Japan and China...more...
From the Telegraph:
...Mr Sato's domestic legacy is unlikely to be tainted, however, by the release of the documents showing that while Japan would not develop its own nuclear weapons, it was happy to ask Washington to use them on its behalf. "The Japanese government superficially stated that it would not allow nuclear weapons on Japanese territory, but it was tacitly accepted that they were sited aboard US warships stationed in Okinawa," said Takao Matsumura, a professor of social history at Keio University. Many Japanese assumed the government's denials were false and some spoke out when it was announced that Mr Sato was going to receive the Nobel Prize, but the government got around the issue by stating that it did not have the power to search US vessels and that it took Washington's word that it would not breech Japan's non-nuclear principles at face value. "The release of these documents is very important for putting the history of Japan's approach to nuclear weapons into context, but I don't think it will change most people's image of Mr Sato," he added...more...
