Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

AGREEMENT ON RESTORATION OF JAPANESE ASSETS IN THE UNITED STATES • 33
AGREEMENT BETWEEN JAPAN AND THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA CONCERNING THE RYUKYU ISLANDS AND
THE DAITO ISLANDS. At the Japan–U.S. summit held in November
1969, an agreement was reached that the Japanese and U.S. governments
would enter formal negotiations to achieve early restitution
of the Ryukyu Islands and Daito Islands to Japan. They signed an
agreement restituting these islands to Japan on 17 June 1971 and it became
effective two months after the signing. Washington and Tokyo
exchanged instruments of ratification in March and May 1972, and
Okinawa was officially restituted to Japan. The United States abandoned
all the rights over the Ryukyu Islands and the Daito Islands
based on the stipulation in Article Three of the San Francisco Peace
Treaty concluded on 8 September 1951. Japan took over the territories
of all these islands and all the rights.
When Okinawa was restituted, in accordance with Article Seven of
this agreement, the Japanese government paid a total amount of $320
million to the U.S. government as a special expenditure. As for the
Senkaku Islands (the Diaoyu Islands), which have been the cause of
a territorial dispute between China and Japan, the Japanese Ministry
of Foreign Affairs takes the official view that the Senkaku Islands
were included in the region that the United States returned, in accordance
with this agreement on Okinawa.
AGREEMENT ON RESTORATION OF JAPANESE ASSETS IN
THE UNITED STATES. The Agreement on Restoration of Japanese
Assets in the United States was concluded in 1955 between
Japan and the United States stipulating that the United States would
restore Japanese assets in the United States that were frozen during
the Pacific War. Those Japanese private corporations that had private
assets abroad gathered together to establish a group requesting
restoration of Japanese assets in the United States, and this group
consistently lobbied U.S. Congress. Insisting that “private assets
have nothing to do with conflicts between two nations,” they vehemently
requested that the U.S. government restore their private assets.
They also argued that because Japanese trade firms’ assets in the
United States were the result of peaceful investment for many years,
restoration of these assets would promote Japan–U.S. friendship.
There was a precedent in that Italian assets in the United States were