Top U.S. military officials considered giving the Self-Defense Forces atomic weapons in the 1950s under an arrangement similar to NATO's "nuclear-sharing" deal, declassified documents from the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff revealed Friday.
In February 1958, the Joint Chiefs decided its "position," saying: "The United States would prefer that Japan integrate appropriate atomic weapons into the Japanese self-defense forces."
The decision came five months after the U.S. military and the SDF conducted a joint map exercise assuming the use of nuclear weapons, according to the documents.