As the only nation to ever suffer an attack from nuclear weapons, Japan’s public is understandably phobic about having nuclear weapons, even in transit, on their soil. Yet Japan’s former government apparently didn’t see things that way.

Japan’s recently elected government says it has found documents that prove that the nation indeed signed a secret 1960 pact with the United States allowing it to transport nuclear weapons through Japanese territory.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had a virtually unbroken hold on power for the last half a century, had repeatedly denied that the long-rumored pact existed, but just days after taking office the new Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government launched a probe into it.

Since the announcement from the Foreign Ministry, a former vice foreign minister from the LDP has come out anonymously to confirm that he saw the minutes from the 1960 meetings related to the pact when he was in office.

The government says the probe is still ungoing, but the final report won’t be released until January. When that happens, it may further strain relations between the US and Japan’s new government, which has suggested it wouldn’t let a nuclear pact stand.

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