A former senior Foreign Ministry official will testify Tuesday before the Tokyo District Court about state documents that plaintiffs argue indicate the existence of a secret Japan-U.S. pact about cost burdens for the 1972 reversion of Okinawa to Japan.
Although successive administrations of the now-ousted Liberal Democratic Party consistently denied the secret pact existed, 91-year-old Bunroku Yoshino, the ministry's former American Bureau chief who was one of Japan's negotiators for the reversion, has claimed otherwise.
The documents include one that is supposed to indicate that Japan secretly shouldered $4 million in costs on behalf of the United States to restore Okinawa farmland used by the U.S. military.