In his Sept. 25 letter, "Overboard on nuclear carrier," Wilson H. Hartz Jr. contends that the Japanese people should not be apprehensive about the arrival of the nuclear-powered USS George Washington at Yokosuka, its new home port. Hartz should not apply America's security yardstick to Japan by insisting that the arrangement is mutually beneficial. The Japanese government has traditionally maintained a firm nonnuclear policy popularly known as the "three nonnuclear principles" -- nonpossession, nonproduction and nonintroduction of nuclear weapons.
Thus Tokyo's initial reaction to Washington's announcement of the George Washington's deployment was negative, but apparently under pressure from Washington, Tokyo changed course and started cajoling U.S. base-hosting municipalities into accepting the central government's new security policy.
The Japanese people do not oppose deployment of the George Washington in Japanese waters simply because of their so-called nuclear allergy, but because of the fear that such piecemeal violation of Japan's national policy will eventually take the teeth out of our war-renouncing Constitution.
If fear of, or obsession with, "Asia, North Korea, Russia or elsewhere" is what motivates the U.S. to deploy the nuclear-powered carrier in Japan, I must repeat Hartz's own words: Such "fear is no longer tenable." The George Washington as well as nuclear-powered submarines should not come to Japan's coastal waters.
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