with all their great potentialities, Mr. Okazaki commented that
he had told the Diet the same thing and had been bitterly attacked
for it, Nevertheless, he believes that it is true,
Returning to the question of the settlement, Mr. Okazaki
said that he had tried to achieve a settlement of one million
dollars but this effort had failed, To attempt to do so now would
really end the Yoshida government even though the situation had
changed somewhat after the Toya Maru accident, which the Japanese
Government greatly regretted, With respect to the Bikini incident,
Mr. Yoshida had clearly indicated that the Japanese Government
does not want to make use of the case to squeeze money out and in.
fact he may still be against asking for more than one million
dollars, However, Mr. Okazaki believes that this amount would not
be enough to create a good public feeling about the settlement in
Japan and that such a settlement would be damaging to good United
States-Japanese relations.
Mr, Robertson said that we want to do what is fair and
equitable but we do not want to set precedents which would be
unfortunate. He agreed completely with Mr. Okazaki that it would
be preferable to have a final settlement. If this proves impossible, perhaps a legal inquiry might be instituted but we hope this
can be avoided.
If we can agree on a definite figure which the
Japanese Government can be sure of we would earnestiy consider it. .
We think that $2 million would be perhaps too high, but that
something between $1 and $2 million might be satisfactory,
Anything over a million dollars may possibly require Congressional
action and the resulting discussions may poosibly lead to bad
reactions in United States public opinion, However, the important
phing now is to see if we can reach agreement on some definite
f.
igure.
Mr, Okazaki said that he appreciated having Mr. Robertson's
views and that he hoped that we could reach a settlementbefore
the testing program is resumed. He asked whether we had any idea
when the tests might be resumed, saying that he needed advance
notice in order to prepare people in Japan. Mr. Robertson said he
did not have this information but that Mr. Okazaki could be assured
of our full cooperation in this respect,