Nukes for Nippon?

JAPAN Nukes for Nippon? Unlike recent junkets by other Administration officials, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird's ten-day swing through Tokyo and Seoul seemed carefully calculated to be thoroughly unspectacular. Laird's message was the same for both allies: they could count on continued protection from the Seventh Fleet and the U.S. nuclear umbrella, but they would have to furnish "credible deterrence" on the ground themselves. Who could get upset over what amounted to yet another sales pitch for the Nixon Doctrine?

Certainly not the South Koreans. To be sure, they would like firmer guarantees of U.S. support in the unlikely event that North Korea's Kim II Sung decides to move from his pinprick attacks along the 38th parallel to an all-out assault. But they will be receiving some $750 million from Washington over the next five years to modernize their 620,000-man military force--and to ease the pain of the withdrawal, possibly by 1975, of the 42,000 U.S. troops remaining on their soil.

Rising Smoke. To the Japanese, however, Laird's visit was about as soothing as an eruption of Mount Fuji. Laird's purpose was primarily to urge Japan to upgrade its armed forces--preferably with arms purchased in the U.S.--and to take a larger economic-aid role in Asia. But almost from the start of the Secretary's stay in Tokyo, U.S. officials were kept busy batting down dark rumors that the U.S. was dragooning Japan into 1) taking over the role of the Seventh Fleet and 2) becoming the biggest nuclear arsenal west of Los Alamos. Few Japanese were convinced by the denials. As Japan's biggest daily, Asahi Shimbun, put it in an editorial cliche: "Where there is smoke, there must be fire."

The smoke rose from a background briefing that Pentagon Spokesman Jerry Friedheim conducted in Tokyo. In response to a question put to him by an American reporter after the briefing, Friedheim speculated that one place Japan might want to increase its microscopic defense budget (which currently accounts for less than 1 % of its gross national product of close to $200 billion) "could be in the area of ships." Friedheim also spoke of "a greater nuclear threat by the Chinese toward Asia." The spokesman's comments were innocent enough, but when they hit print, they were surrounded with speculation that Tokyo would soon build a vast fleet, go to work on an anti-ballistic missile system and, most astonishing of all, develop nuclear weapons.

The State Department and the Pentagon quickly protested. No one, said State, saw any "necessity or possibility" that Japan might have to become a nuclear power. "I was not asked the question," Laird complained. "It did not come up in our discussions." Then how did it come up? The Laird visit, TIME learned, was deliberately used by the Japanese Defense Agency to raise the nuclear issue. For some time, Japanese strategists have worried over America's Asian withdrawal, the rise of China's nuclear capability, and the increasing presence of Soviet warships in the seas around Japan. Many of Japan's defense leaders (and a number of hawkish civilians) have agreed that Japan will need its own arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons by around 1980.

Seasoning Minds. There are no technological reasons why Japan cannot develop its own nukes. Nor are there any legal obstacles. Japan's celebrated "peace" constitution does not prohibit nuclear weapons, as long as they are defensive. Moreover, though the Japanese have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, they have yet to ratify it.

What does inhibit Japan, however, is the deep-seated "nuclear allergy" of its 103 million people. Some authorities in Tokyo want them to begin thinking about the unthinkable. Thus when Laird came to town, Japanese Defense Agency officials recruited sympathetic Western reporters to raise the nuclear issue, knowing that almost any reply would produce considerable fallout. It was, Japanese officials predict, only the first effort in a continuing campaign to "season the minds" of the Japanese public.

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