Nobel Peace Prize winner asked for a nuclear strike
Former Japanese prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Eisaku Sato asked the US to stage a nuclear strike on China in the event the Chinese government attacked Japan.
Citing declassified documents from Japan’s Foreign Ministry, the Japanese Asahi newspaper says the former prime minister made the request to US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara when he visited Washington in 1965, three months after China detonated its first nuclear bomb. Sato expressed his expectations that the US would use nuclear weapons for a retaliatory attack against China, in case of a war between China and Japan.
During the prime ministership of Sato, Japan entered the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974 in recognition of Japan’s entry into this treaty. Sato passed away a year later.
