ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the evolution of Japanese foreign policy with regard to its security relations with the United States. It begins with a discussion of the consensus-building process in the Sato cabinet. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) examined possible terms of the U.S. bases in Okinawa after reversion. Prime Minister Eisaku Sato held briefing meetings with Foreign Minister Kiichi Aichi and senior diplomats from the Foreign Ministry. Japanese consultations with U.S. counterparts included those between Ambassador U. Alexis Johnson, Prime Minister Sato, and Foreign Minister Aichi from December 1968 to January 1969. Second, this chapter explores the evolutionary process behind Sato’s decision to pursue the non-nuclear homeland-level reversion of Okinawa (the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Okinawa and the application of the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty to Okinawa). Sato continued to carefully monitor the development of momentum of the Japanese domestic sentiments toward reversion, while MOFA officials conducted a series of policy studies regarding possible exceptions for the free use of U.S. bases in the post-reversion Okinawa. Sato also obtained policy recommendations from his private advisory group, the Okinawa Base Study Group. Finally, the chapter considers the effect of U.S.– Japan preliminary talks, including former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi’s contacts with President Nixon in early April 1969, and the preparatory trip by Fumihiko Togo, the Director-General of the American Affairs Bureau, to Washington, DC in late April 1969. From late 1968 to early 1969, the Japanese government sought to develop a schedule and define the terms of official negotiations toward the reversion of Okinawa. The conventional interpretation of the timing of Sato’s decision to pursue a non-nuclear reversion of Okinawa at the homeland level (kakunuki hondonami) points to his statement at the Upper House Diet on March 10, 1969.1 In particular, Sato declared that his cabinet would pursue the withdrawal of all nuclear weapons from Okinawa at the time of reversion and the automatic application of the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty to Okinawa without any amendments. Declassified Japanese and U.S. documents reveal, however, that after the November 1968 U.S. presidential election, the Japanese government was testing the possibility of non-nuclear homeland-level reversion in both private and public statements.
