Secret Okinawa Reversion Negotiator’s Suicide Note Now Open to Public

Haebaru, Okinawa Pref., Dec. 22 (Jiji Press)–A suicide note left by Japan’s under-the-table negotiator on the 1972 Okinawa reversion has been exhibited at the Okinawa Prefectural Archives, telling visitors the envoy’s grief of brokering a secret nuclear agreement with the United States. It has been known that international politics scholar Kei Wakaizumi was assigned to negotiate with the United States on the return to Japan of the southernmost prefecture as a confidential envoy to then Prime Minister Eisaku Sato and secretly promised that the Japanese government would allow the U.S. military to bring nuclear weapons in Japan again in case of emergencies. The secret deal, which broke the impasse in the tough negotiations and paved the way for Sato and then U.S. President Richard Nixon to sign the reversion of Okinawa, whose strategic significance at the time was extremely high for the United States to carry out its war in Vietnam, was disclosed by Wakaizumi in his book in 1994. The note was written as a “petition” on Okinawa Memorial Day on June 23 that year, and Wakaizumi killed himself in July 1996. The letter addressed to “all people in Okinawa” says: “I will punish myself to fulfill my heavy accountability for history. … Simply I feel sorry … I have no words to express my apologies.” A male friend of Wakaizumi in Fukui Prefecture donated it to the prefectural archives in the town of Haebaru last month for public viewing. The exhibition runs through Sunday. “This should be an important material to understand the current state of Okinawa and think about (Okinawa’s) future,” said an Okinawa Culture Association official in charge of the event. The official also noted that Japan’s three nonnuclear principles need to be understood by reviewing the international situation at the time and related developments until now. Then the official expressed hope that visitors “directly sense thoughts Wakaizumi put into the petition and start considering” what to do with the principles at a time when the government of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is discussing overhauling them. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]