WORLD : Japanese Halt Inquiry Into U.S. H-Bomb Lost Off Coast in 1965

The Japanese government said today it is dropping its inquiry into the U.S. hydrogen bomb lost at sea 24 years ago off the coast of Japan.

The U.S. Defense Department had said further queries into the accident could endanger U.S. military policy.

“The Japanese government understands the U.S. position and has no intention of making further requests of it,” Kyodo News Service quoted an unidentified Foreign Ministry official as saying today.

The case embarrassed both governments--Japan because it bans nuclear arms but appeared to have turned a blind eye to passage of such weapons through its waters, and the United States because its policy of not commenting on the location of such weapons came under new scrutiny.

In 1965, a U.S. Navy A-4 Skyhawk accidentally rolled off the carrier Ticonderoga bearing a one-megaton H-bomb. The pilot died, and the bomb sank in waters 16,000 feet deep.

The incident was kept secret until 1981, when the Navy said it had occurred 500 miles from land.

But in May it was disclosed that the bomb had sunk about 80 miles from a Japanese island in the Okinawa group.