Washington - The US secretly stored nuclear weapons on two Japanese islands during the Cold War, according to a report due out today in a nuclear science journal. It contradicts Japan's claims at the time that no such weapons were on its territory.
There were nuclear weapons on both Chichi Jima and Iwo Jima islands, there was an enormous and varied nuclear arsenal on Okinawa, and nuclear bombs without their fissile core were kept on the Japanese mainland at Misawa and Itazuki airbases, the report in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says.
The report's authors say their information is based on declassified Defence Department documents obtained in October.