-Caveat Lector- Report: U.S. Stashed Nukes in 'Non-Nuclear' Japan Th only country to suffer an atomic attack was for years the site of a secret arsenal of U.S. nuclear weapons, a group of American scientists said on Sunday. Even as the defeated Asian powerhouse was forswearing the "possession, production or introduction" of the devices that devastated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American military leaders were violating that rule, with the apparent acquiescence of Japanese officials. Citing an unnamed Japanese source, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said in a report released on the Internet Sunday that the United States stored nuclear bombs on Chichi Jima, some 500 miles southeast of the Japanese mainland, and Iwo Jima, 760 miles south-southeast of Tokyo. The report also said the United States kept "an enormous and varied nuclear arsenal" on Okinawa, nuclear bombs (sans their fissile cores) stored on the mainland at Misawa and Itazuki airbases (and possibly at Atsugi, Iwakuni, Johnson, and Komaki airbases as well), and nuclear-armed U.S. Navy ships stationed in Sasebo and Yokosuka. The report cited 13 separate locations in Japan that had nuclear weapons or components, or were earmarked to receive nuclear weapons in times of crisis or war. "Fabled as a ‘non-nuclear nation,’ Japan is beginning to look very different, given what we now know," the report said.``Japan may have had its principles, but the Pentagon had its nuclear war plans and it pushed the envelope as far as it could. 'Non-nuclear Japan' was a sentiment, not a reality." Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi declared in 1959 that Japan would neither develop nor allow nuclear weapons on its soil. According to the Bulletin, the bombs were kept in bases on the two U.S.-occupied islands in a sleight-of-hand that allowed both countries to use a technicality to deny they were violating the injunction. The bombs were stored separately from their plutonium or uranium cores. Ships that carried nuclear weapons were deemed not "in Japan" because they were an inch or two off land, the Bulletin said. The ruse was concocted to keep the pro-American Liberal Democrat government in power in Tokyo, the Bulletin said. The weapons were kept in Chichi Jima and Okinawa from the 1950s to 1966, the report says. Okinawa was home to its nuclear menagerie until 1972, when the American occupation of the Japanese island ended, it says. Caves on the two smaller islands, relatively far from the Japanese main islands, were to act as a hideout for submarines and bombers to stage counterattacks in a nuclear war. The main U.S. bases, including Okinawa, Pentagon planners reasoned, would already have been destroyed. Report authors Robert S. Norris, William Arkin, and Wiliam Burr deducted the location of the nuclear repositories by culling through recently declassified U.S. military papers, interviews with veterans who served overseas, the National Archives and U.S. Navy Archives and suggestions from experts around the globe. The best evidence came from what the Bulletin described as a "highly knowledgeable Japanese source." The Bulletin authors in October reported that the U.S. had kept nuclear weapons at 27 sites throughout the world, sometimes without the knowledge of the local governments. Among the locations named were Okinawa, South Korea, Morocco, France, and most of the Western NATO countries. The authors said they had mistakenly identified one of the sites - a location beginning with the letter "I" but which was otherwise blacked out - as Iceland. That "I" location has now been confirmed as Iwo Jima, they said. A "C" location, which could not be identified in October, is Chichi Jama, they said. A Defense Department spokesman was quoted as saying that even the article did not accuse Washington of violating any of its legal obligations to Japan. "Our position is that there have been no violations of our obligations under the security treaty and related arrangements," Walter B. Slocombe, under secretary of defense for policy, said. The State Department and the Pentagon have otherwise kept strictly to their long vow of not commenting on how the U.S. deploys nuclear weapons overseas. First published in December 1945, the Bulletin was founded by the Atomic Scientists of Chicago to promote international cooperation and challenge the notion that more and bigger weapons enhanced national security. Its report will be released in print in its January/February issue, but is already posted online at the group’s Web site, www.thebulletin.org. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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