Dear Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida,

Although you are probably unaware, longtime readers of The Japan Times may recall that in April 2011, I sent an open letter to then Prime Minister Naoto Kan ("Who pays for nuclear nightmare?" Hotline to Nagata-cho, April 19, 2011) asking about who was going to pay for the massive costs resulting from the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

This question was prompted in part by the existence of documents revealing that as early as November 1971, officials at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) expressed concern about design flaws in General Electric's Mark I nuclear reactors. All of the reactors that experienced meltdowns at Fukushima No. 1 were of this type.