Asia-Pacific

Japan may pay over $320M to US on Okinawa's transfer

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-03-12 20:55

TOKYO - Japanese Finance Minister Naoto Kan said Friday that he believed Japan paid more than 320 million US dollars to the United States as part of a deal when the transfer of power in Okinawa between Tokyo and Washington happened in 1972, according to local media reports.

Kan said that the Japanese government made an interest-free deposit of 53 million dollars to a US Federal Reserve bank that remained until 1999.

The revelation comes days after the Foreign Ministry revealed in a report on three secret pacts between the United States and Japan that an agreement had been made related to the transfer of power in Okinawa.

However, there was no evidence connecting the deposit to the transfer of power in Okinawa, Kan added.

Officially, Japan paid 320 million dollars when power was transferred to Tokyo, but Kan said the deposit casts doubt that the official figure accounted for the total amount that was handed to Washington at that time.

Declassified documents in the United States have led some experts to put the total amount paid by Japan at the time as high as 685 million dollars.

The Foreign Ministry report released Tuesday has cast doubt on the way previous Japanese governments conducted affairs overseas. The report said it believed past governments had been "dishonest".