Eisaku Sato, then Japanese prime minister requested the United States in 1965 to immediately use nuclear weapons if Japan was engaged in a war with China, Japanese media reported Monday, citing diplomatic documents disclosed by the foreign ministry.
On his first visit to the United States as prime minister in January 1965 following China's successful nuclear test in 1965, Sato said in talks with then U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that Japan expected the United States to launch such retaliatory nuclear attacks immediately from the sea.
During his stay in the United States, Sato also met with then President Lyndon Johnson, getting a guarantee from Washington that it would protect Japan under its nuclear umbrella.
The declassified documents also showed that the Japanese foreign ministry compiled a document in 1959 warning that a declaration of not going nuclear could hamper Japan's flexibility in pursuing national security, eight years before Sato declared the three principles of not producing, possessing or allowing for the entry of nuclear weapons into Japan in the Diet in December 1967.
Sato, who acted as Japan's prime minister from 1964 to 1972, died at age 74 in 1975.
It is the 21st time that Japanese diplomatic documents have been unveiled. The foreign ministry disclosed some 112,000 pages of documents between 1945 and 1976.
Source:Xinhua
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