Japan protests unannounced visit by US nuclear sub

10 November 2008

By MARI YAMAGUCHI

TOKYO –Japan lodged a protest with the United States after an American nuclear submarine made an unannounced visit in southern Japan, the Foreign Ministry said Monday.

The USS Providence arrived in the White Beach Naval Facility on the southern island of Okinawa on Monday without prior notice, a requirement under a bilateral agreement, and stayed there for two hours, the ministry said.

"It is extremely regrettable that a U.S. submarine visited one of our ports without proper advance notice," the ministry said in a statement. "The United States must notify our government at least 24 hours before its nuclear submarines visit our ports."

Nuclear warships and weapons are a sensitive topic for Japan, the only country that has suffered atomic attacks.

Shinichi Nishimiya, director of the ministry's North American Bureau, lodged a protest with the U.S. Embassy, demanding an explanation and efforts to prevent such incidents in the future, the ministry said.

It said James Zumwalt, the embassy's deputy chief of mission, responded later Monday that the incident was caused by miss-communication in the U.S. Navy and that the U.S. government regretted it.

U.S. Embassy officials were not immediately available for comment.

A disclosure in August by the U.S. Navy that another nuclear submarine, the USS Houston, had leaked small amounts of radiation while visiting Japanese ports over the past two years triggered protests in Japan, though an investigation concluded it posed no health threat.