© 2000 John Consoli |
Japanese journalist Masukatsu Ota was a bit surprised when he
was named a visiting Fulbright scholar last year. After all, he
explains, his research project involved U.S. nuclear strategy
and its influence on Japanese defense policy--a potentially touchy
topic for both governments.
"The official Japanese government position--articulated
in 1967 by former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato's 'Three Non-Nuclear
Principles'-is that it will never possess or manufacture nuclear
weapons, and never allow the U.S. to bring nuclear weapons into
Japan," he states. "However, until 1972, the U.S. Army
stored nuclear weapons on Okinawa, where Japan had residual sovereignty
with the U.S. military administration, and at various times has
brought nuclear-capable attack submarines into Japanese seaports.
I was curious as to whether there had been a kind of secret understanding
about this between the U.S. and Japan."
A staff writer for Japan's Kyodo News Service, Ota is used to
asking hard questions. Early in his career, he was based in Hiroshima,
where he covered politics, government and atomic bomb issues.
He also worked in Osaka during 1990-95 and wrote about the problems
that occurred when the Japanese bubble economy burst. Last year,
he published a book, Genealogy of Immunity, which dealt
with the experiments the Japanese Army conducted on human subjects
during World War II.
"I'm not a muckracking journalist," he says. "In
fact, I sometimes consider myself more of an historian than a
reporter. But I do want to make my Japanese government more accountable."
Ota was based at the University of Maryland's Department of Government
and Politics during his Fulbright year, although he spent much
of his time at the National Archives in College Park, Md. He also
paid visits to the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston and the Lyndon
B. Johnson Library in Austin.
"I went through thousands of pages of documents, including
many that the U.S. government had declassified," he says.
"I also interviewed 15 key decision makers in the Kennedy
and Johnson administrations," including Dr. Walt Rostow,
former Special Assistant to the President for National Security
Affairs; Dr. Carl Kaysen, former Deputy Special Assistant to the
President for National Security Affairs; Dr. Roger Hilsman, former
Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs; and Dr.
James Thomson Jr., former Special Assistant to Under Secretary
of State Chester Bowles and later staff of the National Security
Council.
Ota was impressed by his interviewees'openness and also that
of the U.S. government.
"I am very respectful and grateful for the way the U.S.
government treats reporters," he states. "I'm hoping
that when I publish the articles on my research a lot of Japanese
readers will learn not only what was going on with U.S.-Japan
defense policy, but also what U.S. democracy is and what it means
for ordinary people."
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