In March 2009, a group of citizens filed a lawsuit demanding that the state disclose three diplomatic documents related to the 1972 reversion of Okinawa from U.S. to Japanese rule. The government had turned down a September 2008 request based on the Freedom Information Law to disclose the documents saying that there was no evidence that the documents exist or that they had been destroyed or transferred. But the United States already disclosed the documents in 2000 and 2002.