No, I’m not talking about Judith Miller, but considering that a judge has just ordered her incarceration, this story from yesterday’s Japan Times is particularly timely.
Trial opens over denial of secret accord with U.S.
A court battle opened Tuesday on a damages suit filed by a former Mainichi Shimbun reporter who claims his career was ruined after he was wrongly convicted for reporting on an alleged secret pact between Japan and the United States over the 1972 reversion of Okinawa.
Takichi Nishiyama, 73, is seeking 33 million yen in compensation and an apology from the government, arguing his report that Japan secretly shouldered $4 million of the costs for Okinawa’s reversion from the U.S. has been backed up by the release of U.S. government documents in 2000 and 2002.
“It is a state crime to submit a false treaty text to the Diet for discussion and approval, and it is an abuse of power to indict a reporter who tried to inform the public of the state crime,” Nishiyama says in the complaint.