2016-1-28
Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida’s official speech at the San Francisco Peace Conference on September 7, 1951, clearly showed to the international community that Kunashiri and Etorofu are inherent territories of Japan.
This article refutes the erroneous interpretation of Article 2 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty by means of the highest-level primary source, the Prime Minister’s speech.
It is shown in Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida’s speech at the San Francisco Peace Conference on September 7, 1951.
2016-11-14.
The following is a continuation of the preceding chapter.
Emphasis in the text other than the headings is mine.
The error of the “San Francisco Peace Treaty theory.”
Prefatory text omitted.
Regarding the renunciation of southern Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands under Article 2(c) of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, as stated in Mr. Sato’s contribution, it is certainly true that on October 19, 1951, Kumao Nishimura, then Director-General of the Treaties Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, gave the following reply before the Special Committee on the Peace Treaty and the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty of the House of Representatives: “Regarding the scope of the Kurile Islands in the San Francisco Peace Treaty, we consider it to include both the Northern Kuriles and the Southern Kuriles.”
On the basis of this, some commentators in Japan have repeatedly made the claim, “This means that Japan renounced Kunashiri and Etorofu, and therefore Japan’s claim concerning the two islands of Kunashiri and Etorofu cannot stand.”
However, words incomparably weightier than this statement by the Director-General of the Treaties Bureau were shown in Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida’s speech at the San Francisco Peace Conference on September 7, 1951.
Before the representatives of all the states party to the treaty, Prime Minister Yoshida made the following statement.
“The Kurile Islands and southern Sakhalin were unilaterally incorporated into Soviet territory on September 20, 1945, immediately after Japan’s surrender.
Moreover, Shikotan Island and the Habomai Islands, which constitute part of Hokkaido, the Japanese mainland, have remained occupied by Soviet forces because Japanese military barracks happened to exist there at the time the war ended.”
He was indeed emphasizing that this was an “illegal occupation” by Russia (the Soviet Union).
Yoshida further continued, “At the time of the opening of Japan, Imperial Russia raised no objection whatsoever to the fact that the two islands of the southern Kuriles, Etorofu and Kunashiri, were Japanese territory.
Only the Northern Kurile Islands from Urup Island northward and southern Sakhalin were, at that time, areas where Japanese and Russian nationals lived together.
On May 7, 1875, through peaceful diplomatic negotiations, the governments of Japan and Russia reached an agreement that southern Sakhalin would be Russian territory and, in compensation for this, the Northern Kurile Islands would be Japanese territory.”
Here, the correctness of Japan’s position that Kunashiri and Etorofu are inherent territories of Japan is clear.
A mere ambiguous reply in the Diet by the Director-General of the Treaties Bureau cannot overturn the weight of an expression of intent directly shown to the international community by the Prime Minister of a nation at the time of the conclusion of the treaty.
Together with the historical facts stated above, I wish to state clearly here that the theory that “Japan renounced the two islands of Kunashiri and Etorofu under the San Francisco Peace Treaty” is erroneous.
Remainder omitted.