fficer and future prime minister, spearheaded Japan's campaign
to become a nuclear power under the cover of the Atomic Energy Basic Law.
- American Complicity
- Kishi secretly negotiated a deal with the White House
to permit the U.S. military to store atomic bombs in Okinawa and Atsugi
naval air station outside Tokyo. (Marine corporal Lee Harvey Oswald served
as a guard inside Atsugi's underground warhead armory.) In exchange, the
U.S. gave the nod for Japan to pursue a "civilian" nuclear program.
- Secret diplomacy was required due to the overwhelming
sentiment of the Japanese public against nuclear power in the wake of the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. Two years ago, a text of the secret
agreement was unearthed by Katsuya Okada, foreign minister in the cabinet
of the first Democratic Party prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama (who served
for nine months from 2009-10).
- Many key details were missing from this document, which
had been locked inside the Foreign Ministry archives. Retired veteran diplomat
Kazuhiko Togo disclosed that the more sensitive matters were contained
in brief side letters, some of which were kept in a mansion frequented
by Kishi's half-brother, the late Prime Minister Eisaku Sato (who served
from 1964-72). Those most important diplomatic notes, Togo added, were
removed and subsequently disappeared.
- These revelations were considered a major issue in Japan,
yet were largely ignored by the Western media. With the Fukushima nuclear
plant going up in smoke, the world is now paying the price of that journalistic
- On his 1959 visit to Britain, Kishi was flown by military
helicopter to the Bradwell nuclear plant in Essex. The following year,
the first draft of the U.S.-Japan security was signed, despite massive
peace protests in Tokyo. Within a couple of years, the British firm GEC
built Japan's first nuclear reactor at Tokaimura, Ibaragi Prefecture. At
the same time, just after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the newly unveiled Shinkansen
train gliding past Mount Fuji provided the perfect rationale for nuclear-sourced
- Kishi uttered the famous statement that "nuclear
weapons are not expressly prohibited" under the postwar Constitution's
Article 9 prohibiting war-making powers. His words were repeated two years
ago by his grandson, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The ongoing North
Korea "crisis" served as a pretext for this third-generation
progeny of the political elite to float the idea of a nuclear-armed Japan.
Many Japanese journalists and intelligence experts assume the secret program
has sufficiently advanced for rapid assembly of a warhead arsenal and that
underground tests at sub-critical levels have been conducted with small
- Sabotaging Alternative Energy
- The cynical attitude of the nuclear lobby extends far
into the future, strangling at birth the Japanese archipelago's only viable
source of alternative energy-offshore wind power. Despite decades of research,
Japan has only 5 percent of the wind energy production of China, an economy
(for the moment, anyway) of comparable size. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries,
a nuclear-power partner of Westinghouse, manufactures wind turbines but
only for the export market.
- The Siberian high-pressure zone ensures a strong and
steady wind flow over northern Japan, but the region's utility companies
have not taken advantage of this natural energy resource. The reason is
that TEPCO, based in Tokyo and controlling the largest energy market, acts
much as a shogun over the nine regional power companies and the national
grid. Its deep pockets influence high bureaucrats, publishers and politicians
like Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, while nuclear ambitions keep the
defense contractors and generals on its side. Yet TEPCO is not quite the
top dog. Its senior partner in this mega-enterprise is Kishi's brainchild,
- The national test site for offshore wind is unfortunately
not located in windswept Hokkaido or Niigata, but farther to the southeast,
in Chiba Prefecture. Findings from these tests to decide the fate of wind
energy won't be released until 2015. The sponsor