Validación de Instrumentos de Expertos

It is evident from the preceding historical account, then, that it has not only been through the actions of defence officials within the USG, but also those within the central GOJ, that the physical presence of the bases and their ‘functionality’ has been retained. The narrative they have

19 _{Ma 1992, p. 454.}

20 _{Hara 2007, p. 181.}

21 _{T. R. H. Havens, Fire Across the Sea: The Vietnam War and Japan, 1965–1975 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton} University Press, 1987), p. 88.

22 _{Ma 1992, p. 458.}

23 _{Yasuyuki Kimura, ‘The Defense Facilities Administration Agency: A Unique Support Organisation for U.S.} Forces in Japan’, Asia-Pacific Policy Papers Series, The Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, September 2013, available online at: http://www.reischauercenter.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/RC- Monograph-2013-Kimura_History-of-DFAA.pdf, p. 30.

relied upon to do so, which stresses the ‘essential’ nature of Okinawa to the defence of Japan and the region, gathered strength to the point that, following reversion, when the DOD considered withdrawing the USMC from Okinawa, the GOJ intervened in order to stop this from ever happening. As former Okinawa Times editor Tomohiro Yara reports, during a July 1973 meeting of the Japan-US Security Treaty Consultative Group Committee, Kubo Takaya, head of Japan’s Defence Agency (later the MOD), argued: ‘Given the need for a mobile force in Asia, the US Marines should be retained’. In response, Thomas P. Shoesmith, chief minister at the US Embassy, reported back to Washington that his Japanese counterparts understood the USMC presence in Okinawa as ‘[the] most tangible

evidence of US willingness to respond promptly to a direct threat against Japan’.25

This intervention is not necessarily surprising, however, when placed in the context of the central GOJ’s prior ‘secret agreements’26 _{with the US following reversion. Included among these was}

an ‘Agreed Minute to the Joint Communique’ signed by Nixon and PM Eisaku Sato in 1969 which allowed for the US, ‘in time of great emergency’, the right to ‘require the re-entry of nuclear weapons and transit rights in Okinawa with prior consultation with the Government of Japan. The United States Government would anticipate a favorable response [emphasis added]’.27 _{Although this}

pact was concluded privately, publicly US presidents continued to frame the US as a ‘Pacific nation [which] maintains a strong interest in the Asian-Pacific region, and will continue to play an active and constructive role there’28_{; that the government’s intention was to ‘maintain an adequate level of}

deterrent forces in the region’29_{; and that ‘in coming years the United States will maintain and}

improve the quality of its present military capabilities in East Asia’.30 _{Japanese leaders echoed these}

25 _{Tomohiro Yara, ‘Withdrawal of US Marines Blocked by Japan in the 1970s’, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 47:4} (2013), available online at: http://www.japanfocus.org/-Yara-

Tomohiro/4037?rand=1385390754&type=print&print=1.

26 _{Known in Japanese as the mitsuyaku, these were concluded between the late 1960s to early 1970s and were} released to the public on court orders after the DPJ filed a formal inquiry in 2009. The agreements mainly covered ‘Japanese covert cooperation in US nuclear war strategy on the one hand and the reversion of Okinawa to Japan’ on the other. For more, see: Gavan McCormack, ‘Deception and Diplomacy: The US, Japan, and Okinawa’, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 9:21:1 (2011), available online at: http://www.japanfocus.org/-Gavan- McCormack/3532/article.html.

27 _{Kitaoka 2010, pp. 20-21. This language, it should be noted here, sounds strikingly similar to that in the Diet} adviser’s comment at the end of Chapter 3 that the GOJ would be ‘scolded’ by the USG if agreements were not ‘satisfied’—and, given the tenor of the minute above, this comment does not appear to be unfounded. 28 _{‘United States-Japan Joint Communique of Prime Minister Fukuda and President Carter’, “The World and} Japan” Database Project, Database of Japanese Politics and International Relations, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, 22 March 1977, available online at: http://www.ioc.u-

tokyo.ac.jp/~worldjpn/documents/texts/JPUS/19770322.D1E.html.

29 _{‘Joint Communique of Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka and U.S. President Nixon’, “The World and Japan”} Database Project, Database of Japanese Politics and International Relations, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, 1 August 1973, available online at: http://www.ioc.u-

tokyo.ac.jp/~worldjpn/documents/texts/JPUS/19730801.D1E.html.

30 _{‘Joint Communique, Productive Partnership for the 1980's (Visit of Prime Minister Ohira of Japan)’, “The} World and Japan” Database Project, Database of Japanese Politics and International Relations, Institute of

remarks, one example of this being PM Noboru Takeshita’s comments, following discussions with US President Reagan, that ‘Japan has also continued to increase its HNS [host nation support] for U.S. forces in Japan, whose stationing is an indispensable [emphasis added] part of the Japan-U.S. security system’.31 _{This characterisation of the USM presence as ‘indispensable’ or ‘essential’ for}

peace and stability in the region predates the language of ‘cornerstone’ by at least ten to fifteen years (though its meaning is more or less the same), appearing in joint statements between the two governments as early as 1960 and continuing into the present.32

In the wake of the 1995 rape incident in Okinawa, however, official US reports on basing in the prefecture did not recommend significant reductions in force presence. In fact, they used the same framing and language employed in the arguments of presidents, PMs, and leading military officials since the end of WWII in favour of a continued presence. A 1998 US General Accounting Office (GAO) report entitled ‘Overseas Presence: Issues Involved in Reducing the Impact of the U.S. Military Presence on Okinawa’, for example, frames the US presence as not only a critical part of PACOM’s regional forward presence to ‘promote international security relationships in the region, and deter aggression and prevent conflict through a crisis response capability’, but also as providing ‘a visible political commitment by the United States to peace and stability in the region’, the

withdrawal of which, it says, ‘could be interpreted by countries in the region as a weakening of the U.S. commitment to peace and stability in Asia-Pacific and could undercut the deterrent value of the forward deployment’.33 _{Former US SecDef William Cohen stressed in the same year the importance}

of sustaining US forward deployment in Asia along similar lines, employing analogy in his argument:

Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, 2 May 1979, available online at: http://www.ioc.u-

tokyo.ac.jp/~worldjpn/documents/texts/JPUS/19790502.D1E.html.

31 _{‘Remarks Following Discussions With Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita of Japan’, “The World and Japan”} Database Project, Database of Japanese Politics and International Relations, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, 13 January 1988, available online at: http://www.ioc.u-

tokyo.ac.jp/~worldjpn/documents/texts/JPUS/19880113.O1E.html.

32 _{See, for example, the 1960 and 1977 Joint Communiques and the 1965, 1972, and 1975 Joint Statements in} the Bibliography.

33 _{Carol R. Schuster et al, 'Overseas Presence: Issues Involved in Reducing the Impact of the U.S. Military} Presence on Okinawa', United States General Accounting Office, 2 March 1998, pp. 23-25.

34

Cohen’s remarks followed on the heels of the 1995 East Asia Strategic Report (also known as the ‘Nye Report’ after its primary author) and the revision of the USJ Defense Guidelines (USJ-DG) in 1997, both of which reaffirmed the centrality of a ‘credible’ US overseas presence to future US strategy in East Asia, ‘a region of growing importance for U.S. security and prosperity’.35 _{Nye put it}

more bluntly in a 1995 speech following the publication of this report: ‘Security is like oxygen: You do not tend to notice it until you begin to lose it. The American security presence has helped provide this "oxygen" for East Asian development’.36 _{Building on this analogy of the US presence as ‘oxygen’}

for the region, President Bill Clinton, in a joint press conference with PM Ryutaro Hashimoto in 1996, stated that ‘everyone knows we have no ulterior motive. That is, we seek no advantage; we see to dominate no country; we seek to control no country; we seek to do nothing in any improper way with our military power. We are only here […] to serve as a source of security and stability to others throughout this region’.37 _{Hashimoto agreed: ‘We welcome [the] presence [of US forces], and we}

believe that it is serving the stability of Asia and the Pacific’.