Documents unearthed at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration show that the United States exerted pressure on Japan after a district court made a historically famous 1959 ruling that the U.S. military presence in Japan violated principles of the war-renouncing Constitution. The pressure worked and the Supreme Court overturned the ruling. This incident provides food for thought on how a nation's judiciary should maintain its independence.
Seven people were arrested in July 1957 after they entered the U.S. Tachikawa base in Sunagawa, Tokyo, while demonstrating against a land survey for base expansion. The Tokyo District Court acquitted the seven March 30, 1959, ruling that U.S. forces in Japan provided a "war potential" prohibited by Article 9 of the Constitution, and that their presence violated the Constitution.
A March 31, 1959, telegram to the U.S. State Department from U.S. Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II, a nephew of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of the Allied occupation forces in Japan, shows that in meeting with Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama earlier that day, the ambassador urged Japan to appeal the case directly to the Supreme Court, skipping the Tokyo High Court. The government did so.
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