When the Ogasawara Islands were returned to Japanese rule in 1968, Tokyo and Washington secretly agreed that Japan would tacitly approve the storage of nuclear weapons on the islands by the U.S. military in the event of an emergency, two declassified U.S. government documents revealed Tuesday.
The two records -- a secret telegram dated March 21, 1968, sent to then U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk from then U.S. Ambassador to Japan Alexis Johnson, and a confidential memorandum at the Department of Army dated Aug. 26 of the same year -- indicate the two sides' secret approval on the issue.
The documents were held at the National Archive in Washington, D.C., and the Lyndon Johnson Library in Austin, Texas.
In the telegram, then President Johnson stated that the Japanese and U.S. governments concluded negotiations on the text that would allow him to exchange verbal statements with then Foreign Minister Takeo Miki "on a contingency requiring nuclear storage" in the Ogasawara Islands, south of Tokyo.