Photo/Illutration Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, center, attends a ceremony in April 1991 to see off a Maritime Self-Defense Force minesweeper headed to the Persian Gulf. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

U.S. officials badgered Japan to send minesweepers to the Persian Gulf in 1987, according to diplomatic documents released by the Foreign Ministry on Dec. 21.

While then Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone never consented, the pressure mounted and led to the dispatch of minesweepers to the Persian Gulf in 1991, the first time Self-Defense Forces members were sent abroad.

A top-secret document from August 1990 was compiled shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, triggering the Persian Gulf War.

The document summarized the various moves made by Washington in 1987 during the Iran-Iraq war.

In May 1987, a U.S. Navy ship was attacked by Iraq in the Persian Gulf. The document explained that the incident created momentum, mainly in the U.S. Congress, for calls to U.S. allies to contribute more to ensure safe passage through those waters.

On Sept. 8, 1987, the U.S. government presented Tokyo with four options for its  contribution--dispatch SDF minesweepers; shoulder half of additional operating costs for the U.S. Navy (about $100 million, or 13 billion yen, a year); shoulder the burden of repairing U.S. Navy ships; or greatly boost Japan’s contribution to paying for the costs of maintaining U.S. bases in Japan.

In addressing the Diet on Aug. 27, 1987, Nakasone said he had no intention of dispatching minesweepers to the Persian Gulf.

But on Sept. 14, 1987, L. Desaix Anderson, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, met with Takakazu Kuriyama, the second-ranking bureaucrat at the Foreign Ministry, and pressed the point that the dispatch of minesweepers was still the top priority request of Washington.

Nakasone met with President Ronald Reagan on Sept. 21, 1987, and told him while minesweepers could not be dispatched, officials in Tokyo were considering a wide range of other measures.

When the proposal was raised to send a Japan Coast Guard cutter to the Persian Gulf, Chief Cabinet Secretary Masaharu Gotoda opposed the move as he did the minesweeper dispatch on the grounds that it would directly conflict with Japan’s stance as a pacifist nation.

While Foreign Ministry officials abandoned plans to dispatch minesweepers or other ships, the government on Oct. 7, 1987, announced that it would provide funds to secure safe passage through the Persian Gulf, including shouldering a greater share of the costs to maintain U.S. bases in Japan.

Kuriyama put together a document dated Oct. 8, 1987, that said officials considered what could be done to correct the impression of Japan as an “irresponsible nation” that did not bear its responsibility or role to support the international order.

Kuriyama added that the contribution by Tokyo was insufficient and that officials should be prepared to face pressure for more measures if safe passage through the Persian Gulf was threatened in the future.

Kuriyama was the top bureaucrat in the Foreign Ministry in 1991 when the decision was made by the Cabinet of Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu to dispatch minesweepers after the end of the Gulf War.

Takuma Nakashima, an associate professor of Japanese political and diplomatic history at Kyushu University, said the documents described the “pre-history” of Japan being pressured to contribute during the Gulf War.

“It expresses the changes of the time when Japan was asked to become more aggressively involved in the actual international political situation,” Nakashima said.

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This article is a part of a series based on diplomatic documents declassified by Japan’s Foreign Ministry in December 2022.

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