Postwar Nuclear Policy between Japan and the United States

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In March 1st 1954 a Japanese fishing vessel, Daigo Fukuryu Maru, suffered from radiation exposure from an American nuclear test in Bikini in the South Pacific. After this incident there appeared both in the US and in Japan a nuclear policy debatSe that the nuclear energy for peaceful purpose in general, and nuclear reactors in particular should be introduced into Japan in order to counter the communitsts' propaganda against American nuclear tests and anti-American movements in Japan. The Operation Coordinate Board of the US National Security Council adopted that policy very soon after the Bikini Incident, and started planning a wide range of strategic programs for Japan. Hidetoshi Shibata, then an executive of the Nippon Television Network Corporation, started his press campaign in January 1955 in the Yomiuri Shimbun with Matsutaro Shoriki, the owner of the Yomiuri Shimbun and later the first president of the Japanese Atomic Energy Commision, for promoting nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Shibata and Shoriki apparently were working together to fight against anti-nuke movements and anti-American activities in Japan. They invited in May John J. Hopkins, President of General Dynamics Corporation, Nobel laureate Ernest Lawrence from the University of California at Berkley, and Lawrence Haftad, director of the division of reactor development of the American Atomic Energy Commision. Their talks in Tokyo were reported to have impressed many Japanese. This paper shows that Yomiuri Shimbun group's activities were in fact supported by the US government, and were done within the framework of the US foreign policy.