In the previous chapter we saw how tensions began to develop between the Pentagon, in its desire to implement at a planning and deployment level in the Far East the reliance on nuclear weapons that underpinned the New Look, and the State Department which was anxious over how this would be received by Asian non-aligned states. But for US policy-makers it was in Japan, in the aftermath of the Lucky Dragon incident of 1954, that the most worrying trends in popular opinion towards nuclear weapons were encountered, and where the American stake in the outcome was highest. Alongside concerns over the state of public opinion were several unwelcome developments in the domestic political scene. Though Washington was happy to see a merger take place in November 1955 between the two main conservative parties in Japan to form the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and so thus instigating a system that would dominate government in Tokyo for the next forty years, much to the discomfort of the State Department, Hatoyama's administration was still determined to improve relations with the Communist bloc. Despite being diverted from making firm overtures to Beijing by signs of strong American displeasure, Japanese initiatives finally bore fruit when Hatoyama visited Moscow in October 1956 to sign an agreement which normalized relations with the Soviet Union and cleared the way for Japan's admission to the UN, giving Tokyo's foreign policy an increasingly independent tenor.