Takichi Nishiyama, who uncovered secret pact in Okinawa return, dies

Former Mainichi Shimbun reporter Takichi Nishiyama, who was convicted in the 1970s for reporting on a secret pact between Japan and the United States over the 1972 return of Okinawa to Japanese rule, died of heart failure in Fukuoka Prefecture on Friday, his family said. He was 91.

As a political reporter for the major daily, Nishiyama revealed the existence of a secret bilateral pact in a newspaper article in 1971, a year before the island was returned to Japan after decades of U.S. administration.

He was arrested in 1972 on suspicion of instigating the leaking of state secrets by urging a Fo...