Regarding the June 22 Kyodo article, "Tainted soil detected at ex-U.S. land in Okinawa": Under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), the United States does not have the obligation to clean up environmental contamination. Can you believe this?
In the real world, this is absolutely not permissible and pardonable, but this is the hard reality about Japan-U.S. relations — the fact that poor Japan is forced under. If Japan were a sovereign nation, it would never have agreed to such unjust terms.
This attests to the fact that Japan is none other than a U.S. vassal, deprived of real sovereignty. Thus the Abe administration's celebration April 28 marking the restoration of Japan's sovereignty under the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty was a farce.
There's something seriously wrong with SOFA and the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. It's about the time to revisit these agreements if Japan really wants to claim that full sovereignty has been restored.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.