February 1, 2024

 

Topic: The abolition of the Japan- Japan-U.S. Joint Committee

 

Brigadier General George B. Rowell IV 

Deputy Commander, United States Forces Japan 

 

Dear General Rowell:

 

We are writing you as U.S. citizens who are devoted to constructive, positive, and transparent cooperation between the United States and Japan concerning the problematic and unconstitutional Japan-U.S. Joint Committee which dominates US-Japan relations today.  

This letter accompanies another letter drafted by a group of thoughtful Japanese citizens concerning that selfsame Japan-U.S. Joint Committee which describes its problems in detail. 

The secretive Japan-U.S. Joint Committee has taken on a malevolent nature in recent years, serving as a platform for the determination of policy in secret without any accountability to elected officials, or to the citizens of Japan, or of the United Sates. It has become a modern-day “Star Chamber” that undermines the relations between the two countries. 

The very concept of a secret Japan-U.S. Joint Committee was wrong from the beginning. This opaque institution that meets regularly in downtown Tokyo to determine policy between unelected American military officers and Japanese government officials undermines the process of deliberative democracy and the rule of law and in both Japan and the United States. Its actions encourage and abet the dangerous trend towards unconstitutional secret governance that has crept through the federal government and military of the United States over the last two decades. 

Such secret governance has its origins in the British Empire, best represented by the grotesque mixture of government, private bankers in London, and mercenaries known as the British East India Company. Such secret imperial governance is precisely what our nation’s forefathers, men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, rightfully rejected when they signed the Declaration of Independence. 

The United States of America is a republic, and its government is defined by the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the Constitution of 1787. Our nation cannot tolerate secret governance by rich and influential individuals, or the privatization of the military as took place in the British Empire. Sadly, that is precisely what the Japan-U.S. Joint Committee practices. 

Imposing this unaccountable and secretive institution on our ally Japan is an insulting infringement on Japan’s sovereignty g, but it is also unconstitutional on the American side, and violates both the legal and the moral imperatives behind the founding of our country.  

The oath of enlistment for military officers, which you signed, contains the words, “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As citizens of the U.S., we share this commitment to the Constitution. 

That is to say that the duty of the United States Forces Japan is to the American people as represented through the Constitution which demands transparent and accountable government. 

Our honorable Japanese colleagues have submitted a letter in defense of the sovereignty of the nation of Japan which contains within it three demands of the USFJ, the United States military, and the United States federal government that we also feel is justified and appropriate. 

 

1) Abolish the US-Japan Joint Committee.

 

2) Make public all the records of the proceedings of the US-Japan Joint Committee since its founding, and make them accessible to all Japanese citizens.

 

3) In addition to releasing to the Japanese public all the secret agreements decided on by the Japan-US Joint Committee without the authorization of the citizens of Japan through a democratic process, take immediate action to assure that all such secret agreements are from this day forward null and void.

 

All three actions are required in light of the extensive examples already revealed in declassified documents of secret agreements made by the Japan-US Joint Committee that violate the constitution and the sovereignty of Japan, and also violate the constitution of the United States of America. 

It is critical that our alliance remain between the peoples of the United States and Japan and that it be completely in accord with the constitutions of the two nations.  We must remember also that the constitutions of the United States and Japan do not contain a single word about multinational corporations, investment banks, consulting firms, arms contractors, lobbyists, billionaires, or, for that matter, the Republican and Democratic parties. 

The United States military must follow the Constitution and it must refuse any secret directives issued within the Japan-US Joint Committee, or elsewhere, that violate either the letter or the spirit of the Constitution. Consultants, corporations, banks and their representatives can play no role in the decision-making process because the United States of America’s government is defined by that selfsame Constitution.

Finally, it is our responsibility as Americans to consider the malevolent forces at work in the military, and throughout the entire Federal government, that are dragging us away from an economy based on productive and sustainable economic activity of a transparent and morally sound design, and towards one based on war, expansion, extraction, and domination.  

Whether it is the illegal and unconstitutional use of military personnel to sell the weapons of arms manufactures (many of whom pay almost no taxes in the United States) or the demands made on the military by consulting firms and lobbyists representing the super-rich, we must stop such unaccountable governance and endless expansion. The historical records of the last five thousand years tell us exactly what tragic end that path of endless military expansion leads to.  

We must recognize how the United States was compromised in the 20th century by the subversion of the requirements of the Constitution, the law, and basic morality in the interests of a vaguely defined concept of national security.  The result has been the establishment of a national security state that follows the economic and structural imperatives of imperialism while pretending to uphold the republic defined by the Constitution. 

The Japan-US Joint Committee symbolizes how the United States had ceased to be a republic and started to act like a global empire. The manner in which the United States treats Japan as a client state is a result. 

We call on you to take action on the case of the Japan-US Joint Committee today and welcome your response to this letter. 

 

Most respectfully,