US may have crafted documents on secret Okinawa pact: Japan

The government will deny the existence of a secret Japan-US agreement over the 1972 reversion of Okinawa in a lawsuit, saying that Washington probably created documents showing its purported existence by itself, sources have said.

Tokyo: The government will deny the existence of a secret Japan-US agreement over the 1972 reversion of Okinawa in a lawsuit, saying that Washington probably created documents showing its purported existence by itself, sources have said.
Bunroku Yoshino, who as the Foreign Ministry`s American Bureau chief negotiated the deal with the United States and has since acknowledged the pact`s existence in interviews, plans to appear before the court as a witness for the plaintiffs, the sources added yesterday.

If during the second hearing, scheduled for Tuesday, the Tokyo District Court decides to summon Yoshino as a witness, there is a possibility that the government`s argument will be substantially weakened because of his testimony.

In a suit filed in March, plaintiffs demanded that the government mainly disclose three documents, including one indicating Japan secretly shouldered USD 4 million as costs that US was supposed to pay to restore Okinawa land plots used by them back to the original farmland.

The papers, which were compiled between 1969 and 1971, were declassified by US government early this decade, but Japan has consistently denied existence of the pact.

The 25 plaintiffs include Takichi Nishiyama, a former Mainichi Shimbun reporter who was convicted in 1970s for urging a ministry secretary to hand over classified documents about the negotiation behind the reversion of Okinawa.

In the first hearing over the case in June, Presiding Judge Norihiko Sugihara urged the government to provide rational explanations of its claim that it does not possess the documents.

Bureau Report

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