![]() ![]() Ticonderoga 130 km off Okinawa’s coastġ966 - Iejima Island residents successfully block the deployment of Nike nuclear missilesġ967 - PM Sato Eisaku first suggests Japan’s three non-nuclear principles - not to possess, manufacturer or allow the introduction of atomic weaponsġ968 - B-52 crashes near nuclear warhead bunkers on Kadena Air Baseġ969 - Japan and the U.S. military secretly stations first nuclear weapons on Okinawaġ956 - Ryukyu Assembly of Elected Officials demands the withdrawal of all nuclear weapons from the islandġ962 - first of four Mace missile sites becomes operational at Bolo Point, Okinawa.ġ965 - U.S. More than 30 million Japanese people sign a petition in protest. tests a powerful H-bomb at Bikini in the Pacific. military rule over Okinawaġ954 - crew of the Lucky Dragon #5 are irradiated when the U.S. occupation of mainland Japan but affirms continued U.S. military seizes control of Okinawa on June 23 rd, fighting continues for several monthsġ952 - Treaty of San Francisco ends U.S. Okinawa and atom bombs: A Timeline (by Jon Mitchell)ġ945 - U.S. His latest book is The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan: Crossing the Borders Within (University of Hawaii Press, 2012). Steve Rabson is professor emeritus of East Asian studies, Brown University, and a Japan Focus associate. Marine airbase in the face of deep Okinawan opposition from the grassroots to the Governor. These include the village of Henoko, now also threatened by the planned construction of a U.S. Along with the risk of “reactivation” is the troubling possibility of serious environmental hazards at former nuclear sites in Okinawa. military presence in the country remains, weighed so heavily. This was one, and perhaps the most dangerous, way that the disproportionate burden carried by this small island prefecture, where two-thirds of the total U.S. bases were scattered throughout Japan, it was only in Okinawa that nuclear weapons were stored and warheads mounted on rockets. “requires standby retention and activation in time of great emergency.” 26-35) that “Okinawa hosted 19 different types of nuclear weapons during the period 1954-1972.” The “secret agreement” accompanying the 1969 reversion pact between President Nixon and Prime Minister Sato identified nuclear weapons sites at “Kadena, Naha, Henoko, and Nike-Hercules units.” The agreement specified that the U.S. Arkin, and William Burr reported in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (November/December, 1999, pp. (“Nike History: Eyewitness Accounts of Timothy Ryan, Carl Durling and Charles Rudicil,” retrieved November 11, 2012, posted at ) The rocket blast killed two technicians and injured one. The missile left the launcher, smashed through a fence, and plunged down to the beach below where the warhead bounced out and skidded across the water “like a stone,” but did not detonate. nuclear weapons came close to bringing nuclear holocaust.ĭescribing an earlier incident in Okinawa, veterans of the Nike-Hercules surface-to-air missile battery at Naha Airbase recalled an accidental firing during a circuits test in 1959, that was blamed on stray voltage. While much discussion has centered on the Cuban Missile Crisis spinning out of control into nuclear war, the latest revelations link 1950s Okinawa as yet another site in which the possession of U.S. military’s vehement denials, a nuclear war could start by accident. Ota Masakatsu’s horrifying account of an erroneous order to launch nuclear missiles in Okinawa during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 raises the possibility that, despite the U.S. ![]()
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