"Nuclear Armored Train for Japan"
Possibility of Japan's Developing Nuclear Weapons Weighed  

by Vasiliy Golovin

Moscow EKHO PLANETY No 8, February 1994
(signed to press 16 Feb 94) pp 18-23

[Text] Tokyo--Instructions for official use printed
on gray-green wrapping paper almost caught my eye about 15 years
ago, when I found myself at routine training courses for
officers of the reserve. They were devoted to the military
possibilities of the Pacific countries, and the Japanese section
of this manual confidently said that Tokyo had all the
possibilities for nuclear arms and was prepared to realize its
potential in the very near future. It inexorably ensued from the
instructions that the perfidious Samurai were dreaming of
nothing other than how to get their hands on a nuclear bomb and
hurl themselves into new conquests.

Imagine for a moment an angry fledgling journalist of the
late-Brezhnev times whom a summons of the military registration
office had yanked out of his home newspaper office, garbed in an
overwashed soldier's "cotton" with lieutenant's shoulder boards,
lodged in a mosquito-filled tent, and forced to busy himself
with all kinds of things, inconceivable for a civilian, not far
from the Chinese border. "Utter rubbish," "a crude soldier's
ravings"--these, perhaps, were the mildest expressions, which I
would repeat over and over to myself, when reading the scribble
"for official use" about Japan, which, as I knew full well,
could in our times be accused of whatever you liked, only not of
unbridled militarism or, even less, of a secret attraction to
nuclear weapons.

But now, I must confess, I am prepared to take a somewhat
different view of the naive propaganda instructions formerly
compiled by vigilant Far East officers ready to deliver the
rebuff. The point is that the assessments which they formulated
15 years ago coincided almost fully with conclusions that are
now being ascribed to their colleagues from the British Ministry
of Defence. The difference is merely the fact that the Soviet
paper has remained, as befits a military document, secret, while
the British one has caused an international sensation.

It surfaced on 30 January of this year in the respectable
London SUNDAY TIMES, which has always been considered a model of
journalistic conscientiousness and has never, we are assured,
been caught out in major fact-juggling. On this occasion the
newspaper reported that Britain's Defence Ministry had in
December of last year presented its government with a classified
report on Japan having everything necessary for the creation of
nuclear weapons. It was a question, you will note, not simply of
the general potential, which, essentially, no one denies. No,
the British military, in the paper's words, declared that Tokyo
already, in fact, possesses all the practical components of a
nuclear weapon, including intricate electronic firing
mechanisms, which have been a stumbling block for many "third
world" countries attempting to take possession of the cherished
bomb.

Essentially, THE SUNDAY TIMES wrote, for the creation of a
warhead Japan has now only to insert the plutonium filling in
the device, which is practically ready. There is as yet, the
authors of the report emphasize, no evidence that Tokyo has
already made the decision to create a "big bomb" or is in
violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But the
potential threat of such a step is growing inasmuch as Japan is
extremely worried by the efforts of neighboring North Korea to
create its own nuclear potential and will, possibly, be
confronted with the need to adopt retaliatory measures of a
military nature.

The article in the British newspaper caused embarrassment in
Tokyo. To my insistent inquiries officials of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and the Science and Technology Agency, which is
in charge of Japan's nuclear programs, initially refused to
"confirm or deny" THE SUNDAY TIMES report altogether. Only a
representative of the National Defense Agency categorically
termed the British article utter rubbish, but just as
emphatically asked me not to mention his name here.

Finally, over 24 hours after the appearance of the
publication, a news conference with Kuniko Saito, first deputy
minister of foreign affairs of Japan, was organized in Tokyo.
The mere fact of it being held, incidentally, was something
quite rare for Japan, where employees of the Foreign Ministry
have no great liking for openly addressing the public,
preferring anonymous briefings for trusted journalists, after
which the requisite articles containing references to
"high-ranking sources in the Foreign Ministry" opportunely
appear.

But on this occasion the country's highest-ranking
professional diplomat deemed it necessary to violate this
tradition in order to lend special authority to an emphatic
refutation of the rumors concerning Tokyo's nuclear plans. Saito
emphasized strictly that Japan adheres unswervingly to the three
nonnuclear principles proclaimed by its government--not to have,
not to manufacture, and not to import nuclear weapons. He
announced simultaneously that the Foreign Ministry intended to
contact the British Defence Ministry and clarify with it the
question of the existence or otherwise of a classified report.
Few of those present at the news conference noticed, it 
seems to me, that behind the decisiveness of these words Saito 
was refuting not entirely what had been stated by the sources in
London. They had not said that Japan was "in violation" of the
Nonproliferation Treaty or was "already making" a nuclear bomb.
As far, on the other hand, as the highly specific possibilities
for its manufacture are concerned, the opinions of the British
report and of independent experts working in Tokyo are
surprisingly coincident here.

"Is Japan ready to create nuclear weapons? Of course," Haruo
Fujii, one of Tokyo's most celebrated military specialists, who
regularly presents commentaries in the news media, told me.
But, in the expert's opinion, it would be profoundly wrong 
to suspect Tokyo of the implementation of some secret,
mind-boggling program and the creation of secret nuclear
laboratories concealed, in the manner of the old inimitable
James Bond movies, somewhere in romantic underground bunkers or
in the craters of volcanoes. No, everything is far more prosaic:
Japan, the expert believes, cleaves to a long-term strategy of
the gradual creation of operational nuclear potential "bit by
bit," dispersing this work in discrete civilian sectors evoking
no suspicion.

The point being that Japan is not, forgive the banality,
Iraq. It possesses a colossal, very ramified diversified
industry and is engaged in a tremendous number of technological
developments in a myriad research institutes, the best of which
belong to private companies. At the same time, on the other
hand, as Tetsuo Maeda, a former member of the staff of the
National Defense Academy and an independent military expert who
is well known here, told me, with the present system of
parliamentary approval of the budget, it is practically
impossible in the country to conceal some large-scale government
spending on research without an indication of its specific
purpose. The general secretary of the Cabinet of Ministers does,
it is true, have at his disposal restricted funds not subject to
accounting, but I have no information as to whether they are
sufficient for funding serious long-term work.

Under these conditions, experts believe, the emphasis has
been put on encouraging "just in case," by way of various
indirect privileges and legal budget infusions, the development
of highly intricate dual-purpose technology which is being
undertaken in private companies. This strategy is producing
results. For example, companies of the country long since
created unique firing mechanisms for performing complex
petroleum-prospecting exploration, which may now be used as
detonators for an atomic bomb, the above-mentioned Tetsuo Maeda,
whose opinion is shared by Haruo Fujii also, informed me. These
firing mechanisms have been tested and are being employed
successfully in oil fields of the Near East. There is reason to
believe that it is to these that the authors of the sensational
"British report" could have been referring.

Naturally, firing mechanisms alone are not enough for the
creation of a nuclear bomb, which requires primarily a filling
from operational fissionable materials. Essentially, as experts
of the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy told me recently in a
private conversation, Japan, with its 36 operating nuclear
reactors and ramified system of nuclear power stations, could
even now practically immediately fashion a primitive "dirty"
uranium or plutonium bomb. It would, of course, be extremely
unwieldy and heavy for delivery, but perfectly ready for use.
But the creation of more modern and compact warheads will
obviously require possession of particularly pure weapons-grade
plutonium.

According to certain unconfirmed information, Tokyo already
has such for research purposes in a quantity sufficient for
several weapons. In addition, it has already been decided at the
present time at the nuclear center of Tokai Village (Ibaraki
Prefecture in the center of Honshu Island) to build a facility
for reprocessing spent radioactive fuel into highly pure
plutonium entirely suitable for use for combat purposes. Of
course, this capacity is being created for peaceful purposes for
the more efficient use of fissionable material in nuclear power
engineering. But no one can deny something else also: With the
startup of such facilities Tokyo will acquire an opportunity in
full for the manufacture of operational nuclear weapons of any
configuration.

Atsushi Tsuchida, an employee of the Natural Sciences
Institute in Saitama Prefecture and an activist of the
environmental movement who is well known in Japan, maintained
categorically in an interview with the WEEKLY PLAYBOY, for
example, that the work in Tokai Village is potentially of a
military nature. The point is that the facility being erected
there will specially serve amazing devices--so-called
fast-neutron breeder reactors, which could become the basis of a
national operational nuclear program. And here we must provide a
brief scientific-technological explanation.

Installations of this type produce energy by "feeding" on a
uranium-plutonium mixture. A hallmark of the breeders is that in
the course of this operation they produce as "waste" more
plutonium than was put into them in the form of fuel. In other
words, they themselves, as it were, partially supply themselves
with radioactive fuel for subsequent operation. And the
enrichment facilities of the Tokai Village plant type will bring
the remaining waste of the activity of the breeders to the
requisite condition, creating a closed cycle--on the
perpetual-motion model, virtually. It is for this reason that
the breeders with their very high efficiency are currently being
extolled in Japan as the most economical source of energy and as
the basis of the country's future energy independence.

Despite all these tempting aspects, leading Western countries
(including the United States, the FRG, Britain, and even France,
which have scored major successes in breeder development) have
already abandoned or are abandoning the massive use of this type
of reactor. There is just one reason--the unacceptable danger in
their operation inasmuch as the plutonium is exceptionally
radioactive, more toxic than uranium by orders of magnitude, and
capable even in microscopic doses of afflicting people with
incurable types of cancer. For this reason the least incident in
its use threatens monstrous consequences.

At the present time Japan alone is proceeding doggedly along
the path of the creation at the start of the next century even
of a network of wonderfully efficient and monstrously dangerous
breeder reactors, intending to make them the basis of its
nuclear power engineering in the 21st century. Of course, such
obduracy could be fully explained by a maniacal aspiration to
energy independence, highly understandable in a country that has
always been horrified by the prospect of it being deprived of
access to oil.

But one can, if one wishes, discern a "false bottom" also
behind the suspicious obduracy of implementation of this
program. The point being that the breeder reactors produce
mainly plutonium-239, which, in turn, serves as the main
component of modern nuclear warheads. When purified to a level
of 94 percent, the "filling" for the big warhead of a heavy
strategic missile is obtained. Its further enrichment to the 98
percent level permits the creation of compact weapons for
tactical missiles. Subsequently, the possession of plutonium-239
opens the way to the creation of neutron warheads, which,
possibly, would be the most suitable for Japan's military
strategy. Upon detonation this "clean" bomb gives off, as we
know, particularly strong and short-lived radioactive
irradiation, reducing to a minimum contamination of the terrain
and the radioactive cloud. For Tokyo such properties could be
particularly attractive based on the fact that all its potential
nuclear adversaries are situated in direct geographical
proximity.

Even the best nuclear weapon, you will agree, has still
somehow to be delivered to target--be it a military base, giant
aircraft carrier, or peaceful city. Specialists believe that
Tokyo already possesses some potential means of delivering
nuclear weapons--although their selection is as yet not all that
convincing, to be honest.

According to information of the military expert Tetsuo Maeda,
the country's armed forces have 10 classes of missile of
American design, on which, in principle, nuclear warheads may be
mounted, including the ASW Asroc and also missiles of the
surface-to-air and ship-to-air class. When transferred from the
United States, they were all, it is true, modified such as to
preclude their use in a nuclear version. But, in the expert's
opinion, the reverse modification would present no great
technical problem. The 155-mm and 203-mm self-propelled
howitzers, which Japan's Self-Defense Force has available, could
also be used for firing nuclear shells--but these are
battlefield weapons, not all that attractive for Tokyo.

From the strategic viewpoint it could be best suited by
missiles capable of threatening potential military adversaries
in the Asia-Pacific region. The powerful two-stage H-II rocket
based entirely on native, Japanese, technology, which was
successfully launched into space for the first time on 4
February, could be of particular interest in this plane. Its
long development, accompanied by accidents and exasperating
malfunctions, pursued the perfectly obvious aim of eliminating
the dependence on the United States in the sphere of rocket and
space technology.

The point is that even with the independent manufacture in
Japan of combat aircraft and missiles under American license,
certain of the most important components come from the United
States in the form of "black boxes," which Tokyo is not entitled
to unseal. Now, however, it is for the first time in history
acquiring an opportunity to have not only its own space-launch
platform but also a practically ready military intercontinental
ballistic missile. We would recall that the H-II can guide into
a geostationary orbit a payload of up to two tonnes, which is
more than sufficient for the accomplishment of any combat
missions.

As Tetsuo Maeda believes, the practical use of the H-II in a
military version is, for all that, unlikely. Its sustainer
engines, as with the Russian Energiya or the American reusable
Shuttle space-launch platform, operate on liquid hydrogen and
oxygen. This simplifies the design of the rocket and enhances
its efficiency. But it is hard maintaining hydrogen-oxygen
engines in a state of permanent readiness, which is particularly
important for an operational missile. In addition, they require
great preflight preparation and are costly to maintain.
In other words, the H-II is of significance mainly as a test
bench for the perfection of its own space technology and as a
means of guiding into orbit heavy satellites and reusable craft.

From the military viewpoint, however, the MV missile, which is
practically unknown to the public at large and which is now
quietly, without a racket in the press, being prepared for its
first launch in 1996 by specialists of the Institute of Space
and Astronautics of the Ministry of Education of Japan, is far
more attractive. This solid-fuel launch platform, which is easy
to maintain, will be capable of guiding into low near-Earth
orbit at an altitude of up to 250 km a payload of 1.8 tonnes.
Such specifications, in experts' opinion, are perfectly
sufficient for converting the MV into an effective military
missile, which would be suitable for placing on alert status.
Concluding these technical details, it may, it seems to me,
be said with sufficient confidence that Japan even now possesses
or could obtain in the very near future every opportunity for
providing itself with full-fledged nuclear weapons.

This also, incidentally, is the opinion not only of the
anonymous authors of the "British report" and independent Tokyo
experts but also of the highly influential American politician
Sam Nunn, who is head of the U.S. Senate Armed Services
Committee and who possesses, if only by virtue of this,
sufficiently accurate information. The Japanese, he declared on
30 January in an interview with NBC Television, currently "have
the necessary possibilities, technology, and plutonium. They
could manufacture nuclear weapons very quickly."

Tokyo does not at this time, come to that, have specific
plans for involving itself in nuclear weapons in earnest. In the
opinion of the majority of specialists, practical work of such a
scale is very hard to conceal at the final stage, although, of
course, Iraq and Israel and South Africa easily twisted around
their fingers the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy
Agency. In addition, possession of the basic technology and
components, of course, still does not mean that it is possible
immediately to form them into a pile and obtain the ready
product. There are, in addition, operational and, in fact, very
serious problems connected, for example, with the development of
systems of the guidance and storage of nuclear weapons, the
choice of sites for the location of the nuclear bases, and so
forth.

However simple it might seem to us, it is extremely difficult
to solve the final question in Japan, with the present
legislation. Concerning the legal problems, incidentally: No one
in Tokyo has actually as yet rescinded either the three
nonnuclear principles, which are officially in effect, or the
antiwar provisions of the constitution, although back in 1982
the Japanese Government declared that the basic law did not in
principle prohibit the possession of nuclear weapons for
defensive needs.... On the other hand, albeit not ideal, a
stable system of parliamentary democracy and civilian control of
the military with nothing in common with the practices in
authoritarian Baghdad or in Pyongyang, where everyone is
obedient to the will of the leader, operates in this country.
In other words, however tedious this sounds, the actual
creation and deployment in Japan of nuclear weapons must
necessarily be preceded by a very serious political decision
based on the support of public opinion. We are talking, after
all, about a drastic change in the entire national strategy,
about the conversion of a peaceful merchant country into a great
military power.

There are as yet too many things in the way of this step. The
ordinary "Japanese in the street" would simply laugh to scorn
anyone who told him of the need to acquire a nuclear bomb. The
public here has sufficiently stable pacifist complexes and is
straining for battle least of all. The memory of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki is still alive in the country, although the keenness of
such recollections has been noticeably blunted. In addition,
there is no serious political force in Japan as yet that could
persuade the public of the need for nuclear arms and an abrupt
change in the country's entire strategy. But the fact that such
a force might appear cannot be ruled out.

Calls were periodically heard earlier also from military and
right-wing-conservative political circles of Japan for some
"thinking" about the nuclear question, but they were quickly and
emphatically cut short--up to and including the immediate
dismissal of the generals who had become unduly lost in
daydreams. Japan had the dependable American nuclear umbrella,
and the splendidly declared nonnuclear principles even
distinguished Tokyo favorably in the world arena from the United
States, the USSR, and other "imperialists" and afforded it an
opportunity to maintain the very profitable reputation of a
quiet, smiling country engaged merely in honest business.

Now the situation has gradually begun to change. Japan is
entering a period of changes, although their direction is not
entirely clear as yet to the Japanese themselves even. Prime
Minister Morihiro Hosokawa is now speaking of a decentralization
of power and a complete restructuring of the bureaucratic
machinery. After a bitter political struggle, the cabinet
approved in January bills on a cardinal change in the electoral
system. Battles are being fought over a revision of the
structure of tax collection and regulation of the economy. All
this in conservative and quiet Japan is gradually creating an
atmosphere where what even about two years ago everyone would
have termed fantasy is becoming possible.

The so-called "new conservatives" headed by the self-assured
and energetic Ichiro Ozawa, secretary general of the Renewal
Party and the most influential figure in present-day Japanese
politics, are the most consistent in their plans. He is calling
for Japan's conversion into a "normal country." This means that
it is time for Tokyo to abandon all postwar self-limitations,
including the formal ban on the creation and use of armed
forces. Japan, the supporters of such a policy believe, should
struggle actively for a seat as a permanent member of the
Security Council and should show that it is in no way inferior
to nuclear France or Britain. Thoughts concerning the
possibility of the abandonment of the nonnuclear principles
would, you will agree, fit perfectly well on the overall canvas
of such arguments. And last summer Tokyo, it seemed to many
people, came very close to expressing them out loud.

This came like a bolt from the blue: During the Tokyo meeting
of the leaders of the seven leading industrially developed
countries the Japanese Government made it understood that it
very much doubted the need for an indefinite extension of the
present Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which expires in 1995.
Tokyo specified, it is true, that it had no intention of
acquiring nuclear arms. But, as stated at that time, Japan does
not believe that the present treaty affords the proper
guarantees from the viewpoint of the struggle against the spread
of weapons of mass destruction. In addition, in Tokyo's opinion,
this document is unfair inasmuch as it accords the great nuclear
powers excessive privileges.

A worried Washington immediately put strong pressure on
Japan, and it very quickly lifted its objections to an
indefinite extension of the treaty. But this story showed
graphically that serious debate is secretly under way deep in
Tokyo offices about the country's attitude toward nuclear
weapons, which could produce a most unexpected result.
It is not, for that matter, a question merely of dreams of
new grandeur, of course. The main thing that could push Japan
into the decision to acquire a bomb is, of course, a sense of
its own defenselessness, which it has felt keenly in connection
with the reports of the DPRK's nuclear preparations. For the
first time since the war, essentially, Tokyo has now perceived
itself to be vulnerable inasmuch as in the years of the cold war
it never, it seems to me, seriously believed in a Soviet attack.

But the Kim Il-song regime, isolated and driven into a corner to
some extent, is far from being the USSR of the times of
Khrushchev or Brezhnev. In addition, the Nodong 1 ballistic
missile with a nuclear warhead being developed by Pyongyang will
without a shadow of doubt be targeted directly on Japan as a
"state hostile toward the DPRK." With secret, carefully
concealed alarm Tokyo is observing also the situation in China,
which is increasing its military potential rapidly. Many experts
are predicting that after the death of Deng Xiaoping an acute
power struggle with an outcome that is hard to predict could
develop there. Even now there are forecasts of, say, an abrupt
increase in Beijing's aggressiveness and a stimulation of its
attempts to take control of the ocean routes in the region.

There is also a mass of forecasts concerning a possible military
clash between the PRC and Vietnam over domination in the South
China Sea, and Tokyo would not want to be a helpless victim of
this battle on transport routes that are of vital importance to
it.

Japan still relies fully at this time in a military respect
on the United States as the guarantor of its security. But
anxious misgivings are being voiced increasingly at expert and
private conversation level in Tokyo as to whether Washington
could or will want in future decades also to defend Tokyo
against regional threats as fervently as it previously covered
it against the "Soviet bear." The fact that the Japanese have no
great faith in the dependability of the American missile defense
systems that are being offered them is of considerable
importance also. Everyone understands that an attack merely by
the North Korean Nodong 1 with a nuclear warhead on an area of,
say, the densely populated city of Osaka would have catastrophic
consequences for the whole country.

Of course, the situation in the Far East and the Asia-Pacific
region is far from boiling point as yet. Washington is with
Tokyo's full support playing intricate games with Marshal Kim
Il-song, attempting to dispose him in favor of renunciation of
the nuclear nightstick in exchange for a "carrot" in the form of
promises of economic assistance and an easing of the trade
blockade. But no one has as yet confounded the pessimists'
predictions that Pyongyang is playing the game of dialogue
merely in an attempt to win time for the total completion of
military programs intended to cover forever "Korean-model
socialism" by a nuclear palisade. After this, it may perfectly
well be assumed that Seoul, which fears most in the world its
consanguineous northern brothers, would also declare its right
to nuclear arms, giving rise to a chain reaction of the
proclamation of "nuclear sovereignties."

In the opinion of the above-mentioned expert Haruo Fujii, it
is this "domino effect" and the failure of the Nonproliferation
Treaty that could force Tokyo also to make the decision to
create its own nuclear defenses. But, as the specialist
believes, even with a dramatic development of events, Japan
would be not the second but only the third "new nuclear power"
of Asia--behind Pyongyang and Seoul.

Of course, no one wants Tokyo's armament with a "big bomb" at
this time--neither its best ally, the United States, nor China
and the neighboring Pacific countries. Such a version would be a
threat also to a Russia which is tormented by internal burdens
and for whom the appearance in the Far East of a new military
superpower--one with territorial claims on Moscow into the
bargain--would be wholly needless.

But the most important thing, of course, is that Tokyo itself
does not as yet want a nuclear bomb with all its attendant
problems and dangers. But, it would seem, it does not,
nonetheless, wholly reject the iron logic of the well-known
Soviet song "Kakhovka" with the music of Dunayevskiy and the
words of Svetlov. All too much indicates that the "peaceful
people" from Japan are according to a plan or with general tacit
consent building on its relief tracks a perfectly usable nuclear
armored train.





Article Id: jptnd005__l94061
Document Id: 0dhwx6h02b44ib
Insert Date: 11/11/95
Purge Date: 11/24/97
Publish Date: 07/18/94
Document Number: JPRS-TND-94-005-L
Document Type: JPRS
Document Title: PROLIFERATION ISSUES