January/February 2000
Vol. 56, No. 1, pp. 11-13, 78-79
Where they were? How much did Japan know?
by Robert S. Norris, William M. Arkin, and William Burr
Fabled as a "non-nuclear nation," Japan is beginning to look very different, given what we now know. Japan may have had its principles, but the Pentagon had its nuclear war plans and it pushed the envelope as far as it could. There were nuclear weapons on Chichi Jima and Iwo Jima, an enormous and varied nuclear arsenal on Okinawa, nuclear bombs (sans their fissile cores) stored on the mainland at Misawa and Itazuki airbases (and possibly at Atsugi, Iwakuni, Johnson, and Komaki airbases as well), and nuclear-armed U.S. Navy ships stationed in Sasebo and Yokosuka. In all, according to the declassified 1956-57 Far East Command "Standing Operating Procedures for Atomic Operations," 13 separate locations in Japan had nuclear weapons or components, or were earmarked to receive nuclear weapons in times of crisis or war.1 http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2000/jf00/jf00norrisarkin.html