Scholar's note on secret Japan-US nuclear pact to be donated to Okinawa

NHK

26-05-2025

A scholar's note related to a secret nuclear pact on Okinawa's reversion from US rule will be donated to the prefecture.
The five-page missive by Wakaizumi Kei is dated June 23, 1994, and addressed to the people of Okinawa.
The prefecture recognizes June 23 as the final day of organized combat there in the closing days of World War Two. It holds a commemorative event every year.
Wakaizumi, born in Fukui Prefecture, central Japan, served as a secret envoy of then-Prime Minister Sato Eisaku and negotiated with US officials separately from the Foreign Ministry on the 1972 reversion.
In a book he published in 1994, the professor of international politics disclosed that the two countries had a secret deal that the US would withdraw nuclear weapons from Okinawa, but would have the right to reintroduce them in times of crisis.
Wakaizumi is said to have felt huge responsibility for the heavy concentration of US military facilities in Okinawa.
In the note, he said he will take his own life to fulfill his accountability for history. He died two years later.
The note's owner, a friend of Wakaizumi living in Fukui, has proposed formally donating the document to Okinawa on the 80th anniversary year of the end of World War Two.
The note will be displayed at the Okinawa Prefectural Archives after September.