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5 tHE SoutH cHInA SEA The Treaty of Peace with Japan, signed in San Francisco on 8 September 1951, states in its Article 2, “Japan renounces all right, title and claim to the Spratly Islands and to the Paracel Islands,” which Japanese forces occupied just before and during World War II and from which they launched attacks on other countries in the region. However, the treaty does not say which nation is to have such right, title or claim to those islands, although the Vietnamese have asserted that, since those islands belong to Vietnam, it can be assumed that they reverted to Vietnam after Japan was divested of them.1 The Chinese have made a similar claim on behalf of Chinese ownership. The Philippines and Vietnam were among the forty-nine states that signed the treaty. Neither the People’s Republic of China, which had taken control of the Chinese mainland almost two years earlier, nor the “Republic of China”, which had fled to Taiwan but claimed to be the government of all of China, was invited to the San Francisco conference that produced the treaty. This was mainly because some of the participants in the conference recognized the People’s Republic as the rightful government of China, while others continued to give recognition to the authorities on Taiwan as the government of all of China. On 28 April 1952, the same day that the San Francisco Treaty entered into force, Japan and the “Republic of China”, which Japan then considered as the Chinese government, signed a separate Treaty of Peace in Taipei. In it, the two parties “recognized” that, under the San Francisco Treaty, Japan had “renounced all right, title, and claim to Taiwan (Formosa) and Penghu (the Pescadores) as well as the Spratley Islands and the Paracel Islands”, again without specifying which nation would have such right, title or claim. On The South China Sea  29 September 1972, Japan shifted its diplomatic relations from Taipei to Beijing by means of the Joint Communiqué issued during Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka’s visit to China. Without explicitly referring to the Paracels or the Spratlys, the communiqué stated that Japan “firmly maintains its stand under Article 8 of the Potsdam Proclamation” issued by the leaders of the Republic of China, the United Kingdom and the United States on 26 July 1945, which limited Japanese sovereignty “to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine”. Six years later, on 12 August 1978, Japan and the People’s Republic signed aTreaty of Peace and Friendship, which reaffirmed the 1972 Joint Communiqué but was otherwise silent on territorial issues. tHE cLomA cLAIm Meanwhile, in 1947, fishing boats belonging to Tomás Cloma, a Filipino marine educator and entrepreneur, mainly in fishing-related ventures, started visiting the islands of the South China Sea that are closest to the Philippines. According to A.V.H. Hartendorp, Cloma “considered plans to establish an ice plant and cannery on Itu Aba and also to exploit the guano deposits on the islands.”2 In 1956, after sending the training ship of his Philippine Maritime Institute on an expedition to the islands in early March, Cloma on 15 May proceeded, through a “Notice to the Whole World”, to claim ownership of an area in the South China Sea of 64,976 square nautical miles. The coordinates indicated were roughly congruent with the area that the Philippine government was to claim as Kalayaan twenty-two years later.3 On the same day, in a letter enclosing the “Notice” and its accompanying maps, Cloma wrote the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, then Vice President Carlos P. García, informing the Philippine government that “about forty citizens of the Philippines were undertaking survey and occupation work ‘in a territory in the China Sea outside of Philippine waters and not within the jurisdiction of any country’, and that the territory being occupied was being claimed by him and his associates”.4 Six days later, on 21 May, Cloma sent another letter to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs informing him that the territory that he was claiming had been named “Freedomland” and enclosing a list of the new names that he had given the individual islands and other features. Stressing that the claim to the territory had been made by citizens of the Philippines and not by the Philippine government or on its behalf, Cloma urged the government to [3.14.142.115] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 07:29...

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