When US Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced an "interim
agreement" for enhanced defense cooperation
between Japan and the United States and
realignment of US forces there last October, it
was hailed as a seminal event in the deepening
alliance between the two countries. Nearly six
months later, however, the agreement is bogged
down in continued wrangling over how US forces
will be divided up, especially on the crowded
island of Okinawa.
Implementation of the
agreement is being hampered by recent revelations
in the Japanese press over the secret payments and
giveaways that Tokyo handed Washington
to pave the way for Okinawa's return to Japan in
1972. By today's standards the sums are paltry,
but they illustrate a way of doing business in
secret that still pervades US-Japan relations.
Okinawa was occupied and administered by
the US military for more than 25 years after Japan
surrendered in 1945. During that time it developed
into an important US base, hosting a major
air force base at Kadena and a large contingent of
US marines. Its return to full Japanese
sovereignty in 1972 was a feather in the cap of
prime minister Eisako Sato and one reason for his
being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.
But Bunroku Yoshino, head of the
Foreign Ministry's North American bureau in the
early 1970s, contends that Okinawa was not
really returned. It was bought. The price tag:
US$330 million up front plus a secret payment
of $4 million as compensation to Okinawan
landowners for the cleanup of land that was
vacated by US forces. Japan also paid for the
removal of nuclear weapons and purchased various
facilities built by the US forces such as water
treatment plants and electric power plants.
Yoshino, 87, made his revelations in a
series of interviews with the Yomiuri Shimbun and
other newspapers. His findings dovetail with those
of Okinawan scholar Masaaki Gabe and others. Gabe
puts the total payment for Okinawa at $685
million. Added to that is $200 million coming
under the general heading of "maintenance of the
bases and other expenditures". That heading has
seen huge payments to the US by Japan for the past
three decades.
The payments are known to
Japanese as the "sympathy budget" (omoiyari
yosan) and in English as "host nation
support". A recent article by Hokkaido Shimbun
journalist Yoshifumi Tokosumi in the current
edition of Sekai magazine quotes a foreign
ministry source as saying that 12.96 trillion yen
(more than $100 billion) was paid to Washington
as "sympathy" money between 1972 and 2005.
In short, Japan has paid and continues to
pay steadily rising sums both for the "return" of
Okinawan facilities and for their continuing
maintenance. Yoshino notes bitterly that the
Japanese government had no way of knowing how any
of the money was spent in the 1970s and that is
surely still the case.
The US has no
more compliant or generous ally than Japan. Late
in 2003, a senior White House official
reassured Japanese reporters: "The president does not
view Japan as just some ATM machine." Of course,
the remark only underscored the notion that
perhaps Washington insiders might indeed joke
among themselves about Japan being precisely such an automated
teller machine, one that needed no secret personal identification number (PIN) to
operate.
Yoshino's bombshell hasn't had
the explosive impact one might expect. Asked to
comment, Shinzo Abe, the chief cabinet secretary
and the man thought to be most likely to succeed
Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister, easily
brushes off questions. He simply repeats the
official position on which the Japanese government
has been insisting since 1972: there was no secret
deal to get Okinawa back. Ever since suspicions
about this secret payment arose at the time, the
government has vehemently denied any payment was
made, and continues to do so now despite Yoshino's
very detailed admission.
While the
major media reported Yoshino's story, the follow-up has
been virtually non-existent. One reason for this
neglect, though by no means an excuse, is the fact
that the news arrived at a time when the media was
in hot pursuit of the Nagata e-mail scandal in the
diet (parliament) that forced the resignation of Seiji Maehara,
the leader of the opposition Democratic Party. One
of the ironies of the timing is that the secret
Okinawa payment was also the subject of a similar
scandal involving a piece of correspondence.
In March 1972 an opposition
lawmaker presented telegrams in the Diet, saying that
they were proof of payment. The government
denied everything, and Takichi Nishiyama, the
Mainichi Shimbun reporter who passed the telegrams to
the politician, ended up arrested, fired
and disgraced. Recently, he testified in a suit he
has brought against the government for destroying
his reputation more than 30 years ago. But no
news organization covered this testimony. Given
the current controversy over realignment of US
forces and Okinawa's status as the host for most
of them, the secret payment would seem to be more
relevant than ever. The media's lack of interest
is difficult to understand.
The money
involved in the aforementined case was actually
quite small, even for the time: $4 million. So why
was the Japanese government so intent on keeping
such a paltry sum secret? Yoshino says that his
main task, as a senior foreign ministry civil
servant at the time, was to make sure the Okinawa
agreement was passed by the diet. Sato had been
boasting publicly that Japan would not have to pay
a single yen for the islands, but then the US
State Department said that it would not pay to
dismantle some facilities, even though
international law compelled it to.
At the
time, the United States was hemorrhaging money to
pay for the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, the American
public was becoming increasingly concerned about
rising Japanese exports, just then beginning to
impinge on the conscience of American consumers
and voters. The administration was not going to
let Sato have Okinawa for nothing.
Secret
negotiations went nowhere, and the government
believed that if it were made public that Japan
had agreed to pay even the $4 million to dismantle
the facilities, lawmakers would be furious at this
unexpected cost and stall passage. So Sato decided
to pay, but keep it secret. Cables related to
these negotiations fell into the hands of
Nishiyama through a foreign ministry secretary
with whom he was having an affair. The government
used the scandal surrounding the affair to
discredit Nishiyama and the Mainichi in the
public's eyes.
This all now sounds like
nothing more than diplomatic bumbling. But the
cover up was deeper. The Japanese people were told
that Sato was working hard to keep Japan
nuclear-free, but in the mid-1960s he told former
US secretary of state Dean Rusk that, while the
Japanese people didn't want nuclear weapons, it
might have to develop their own nuclear deterrent
to counter China. The Chinese exploded their first
atomic bomb in October 1964.
The United
States didn't want either country to have a bomb.
By maintaining bases on Okinawa and including
Japan under their nuclear umbrella, the Americans
correctly believed Japan would abandon its quest
for an atomic arsenal. In return, Sato got to play
the hero. He enunciated Japan's famous Three Nos -
never to make, possess, or allow on Japanese
territory nuclear weapons. This plus having Japan
sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty played a
role in his Nobel Prize.
We
now know that the
US brought nuclear arms to Okinawa even after
the handover, and Sato knew it. In a 2002 book
commemorating 100 years of the prize, the Nobel
committee admitted that awarding Sato the Peace
Prize was, in hindsight, the biggest mistake it
ever made.
The chickens are coming home to
roost. Nishiyama, whose reputation has been partly
redeemed by Yoshino's admission, told the Tokyo
Shimbun that the secret payment set a precedent
for Japan's subsequent omoiyari
(sympathetic) policy toward US bases and "sowed
the seeds for the poisonous grass that has grown
so rampantly". That's a rather florid way of
putting it, but the attitude he describes seems to
fit the present situation. Japanese negotiators
were reportedly shocked that Washington is asking
them to shoulder 75% of the cost of moving
soldiers from Okinawa to Guam.
Meanwhile,
force realignment continues to dog US-Japan
relations, and Tokyo continues to act in a
high-handed manner, ignoring critics and acting
without consulting the local authorities most
concerned. At the same time, Washington continues
to demand payments that make the earlier secret
deals look like chickenfeed. The bill for simply
moving 7,000 marines from Okinawa to Guam is
roughly $10 billion!
If history is any
guide, a deal will again be cut, Japan will pay
what it is billed, the truth will be concealed,
the government will lie about it and persuasion,
bribery, and, if necessary force, will be deployed
to deal with official and citizen opponents to the
arrangement.
