Details of the activities of the U.S. Air Force’s nuclear weapons management unit, which was deployed in Okinawa under U.S. military rule during the 1950s and 1960s during the Cold War, were recently learned from U.S. military records. In the first half of 1957 alone, at least 150 incoming and outgoing training exercises using live bombs with destructive power greater than that of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were confirmed in areas close to the population. Such cases reveal that Okinawa was used as a base of operations for the U.S. military’s hypothetical use of nuclear warfare in Asia.
The Kyodo news agency reported today that it has also confirmed through records that core parts of nuclear weapons, called “nuclear components” including nuclear fissile material, were frequently moved in and out of Okinawa during the Cold War period when the U.S. military conducted nuclear bomb handling training. In the hot and humid Okinawa, where the shields covering the weapons are prone to corrosion, it was also documented that the safety management of nuclear weapons is “drying out” as a countermeasure.
This document is the annual report of the 313th Air Division of the U.S. Air Force, which managed and operated Kadena Base (Kadena Town, Okinawa Prefecture, etc.), and Masaaki Kabe, professor emeritus of the University of the Ryukyus, obtained and kept the part from 1955 to 1964. They include records related to the 12th Air Storage Squadron, which was dedicated to assembling and moving nuclear weapons in and out, and the 7th Tactical Storage Squadron, which managed nuclear weapons and ammunition.
Both of these squadrons were deployed at the base.
According to the report, in 1957, the 12th Aviation Storage Squadron conducted training such as removing nuclear bombs from bombers arriving at Kadena Base and loading them into the aircraft after inspection. In March 1957, the U.S. Army conducted a large-scale exercise, “Whitehorse,” assuming that the base would be used as a strike position in the event of a nuclear war.
During the training, a variety of nuclear bombs were used, including the hydrogen bomb MK15 (weighing about 3.4 tons), which had more than 100 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb.
The document also boasts of the “results” of the training, such as “successfully moving the MK15 in and out 59 times in an average of about one hour”, as it is necessary to move the various nuclear bombs as quickly as possible in order to effectively execute the battle plan in case of an emergency. There are also records of the use of the Kadena base managed by the 7th Tactical Storage Squadron and the operational plans for nuclear weapons on Iwo Jima.
According to Kyodo News, this series of documents will be made public on the homepage of the University of the Ryukyus Institute of Island Area Science in the near future.
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