The Spear and the Shield

With morning coffee in Washington (where it was 8:17 a.m.) and French champagne in Tokyo (where it was 9:17 p.m.), the U.S. and Japan last week formally signed a treaty restoring Okinawa to Japanese control. The simultaneous ceremonies, the first of their kind ever to be linked by a satellite television circuit, came 26 years after the U.S. capture of the island in one of the last and bloodiest battles of World War II. They marked the return of the last Japanese territory won by U.S. forces during the war.

In Washington, before 100 guests, Secretary of State William Rogers signed the document in the Thomas Jefferson Room of the new State Department building. President Nixon, who had personally worked out the preliminary agreement for the treaty with Japan's Prime Minister Eisaku Sato in 1969, was not present. The official explanation was that while Sato is merely head of government, Nixon is head of government and state as well. Protocol thus dictated that he not attend unless Emperor Hirohito put in an appearance in Tokyo. After Foreign Minister Kiichi Aichi signed for Japan, Sato said that he was "happy beyond words" and hailed the treaty as the beginning of "a new Pacific age."

Mixed Feelings. Not everyone was quite so happy. Even while the signing was taking place at the Prime Minister's residence, 90,000 demonstrators throughout Japan protested that the treaty lacked a clear provision for the removal of nuclear weapons from Okinawa. In sporadic clashes with police, more than 600 were arrested, and scores of students and police were injured. Shortly after the signing, three opposition parties announced that they will attempt to block ratification in the Japanese Diet because of the ambiguity of the nuclear provision.

The sentiment in Washington was not undiluted joy either. The treaty must be ratified by a two-thirds majority of the U.S. Senate before it can take effect, probably next year. Some Senators, notably South Carolina's Strom Thurmond and Virginia's Harry F. Byrd Jr., have already threatened to oppose ratification unless the Japanese place more stringent controls on their textile exports.

The U.S., though, will retain 88 military installations on the 454-sq.-mi. island, including the huge Kadena Air Base, which is presently a major reconnaissance, support and transport base for the Indochina war. A high American military official on Okinawa said last week that although the U.S. will control only one-seventh of the land it formerly controlled under the treaty terms, "we will have 95% of what we had before. We are keeping those bases that are essential." Japan will take over 46 small U.S. installations, for which it will pay $320 million in compensation over the next five years.

Crucial Issue. The touchiest matter is the question of nuclear weapons, always a crucial issue in Japanese politics because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The oblique language of the treaty in this regard--that the "U.S. would not exercise the right to store nuclear weapons on Okinawa" unless Japan agrees --stems from the fact that the U.S. has never officially acknowledged that it has nuclear weapons on Okinawa. There are, in fact, quite a few of them. Last week the Defense and State departments jointly proposed to the White House that hundreds of nuclear bombs, ground-to-ground rockets, atomic land mines and depth charges, air-to-air missiles and surface-to-air missiles be moved to Guam, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and the U.S. American spokesmen insist that any reintroduction of such weapons to Okinawa will require Japanese approval. But the treaty implies that Japan would be obliged to grant such approval if the security of the Republic of Korea or Taiwan was threatened.

The 1969 Nixon-Sato agreement also commits Japan to partial defense responsibility for Asia, with U.S. nuclear power serving as "the spear" and Japanese manpower as "the shield," in the words of Self-Defense Agency Director Yasuhiro Nakasone. Though the Japanese constitution specifically prohibits the country from developing offensive capabilities, Japan has been steadily building up the top nonnuclear military force in Asia, under pressure from the U.S. By 1975, it is scheduled to have a 286,000-man army and an air force with 900 modern warplanes.

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