From Honda cars to sashimi meat, Japanese products and culture have been a constant presence in 21st century America, despite the political disagreements that surround the post-World War II alliance between Japan and the U.S.
Sixty-eight years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, former Director of UCLA’s Center for Asian American Studies Don Nakanishi said relations between the U.S. and its former enemy are astonishingly close, even with a newly powerful political party in Japan scrutinizing the U.S. government’s involvement in its country.
Japan’s newly elected political party, the Democratic Party of Japan, has long been critical of the security alliance created by the peace treaty that ended Allied occupation of the country at the close of World War II.
The treaty put Japan within the American Cold War security umbrella and made Japan the U.S.’s forward post in the Pacific and host to a tremendous number of American military personnel, said assistant Professor of history William Marotti.
The alliance also prohibited Japan from building up its own army and tied the country to the U.S.’s military operations, such as the Korean and Vietnam wars.
“There are people who are concerned with the kinds of encroachments on Japanese sovereignty included in the security alliance, ones dictated by the U.S. and largely acquiesced to by the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party,” Marotti said.
Another issue at play is the apparent U.S. history of “covert connections” in Japan, Marotti said.
“A number of ambassadors have testified in their memoirs that we have intervened in Japanese domestic politics using covert money,” he said. “Allegations are that we used CIA money to put together the conservative coalition that (formed into) the Liberal Democratic Party, the party that was previously in power for decades.”
He added, “One of the things going on (in Japan) is a renewed attention at trying to get at some of these secrets.”
The U.S.’s recent interest in fostering a stronger relationship with China has also influenced Japan’s decisions regarding the security alliance and their relationship with the U.S., Nakanishi said.
“It’s one thing to campaign (for changes), but it’s another thing to govern,” Nakanishi said. “What irks (Japan’s leaders) is that the relationship between the U.S. and Japan had been the most significant for both countries for many, many years in terms of their economic and political goals and cultural development … and yet they see the U.S. putting more emphasis on China.”
Nakanishi added that President Barack Obama’s recent visit to Japan was not marked by any discussion regarding major changes to or complaints about the security alliance, suggesting that the Japanese government is not ready to breach the issue at that level.
“America and Japan, on a citizen-to-citizen level and on a cultural level, have had a remarkably friendly relationship for many, many years despite World War II,” Marotti said. “Even when American security policy was being criticized mightily (in Japan), even when we were napalming Vietnam, there was still strong support for America, in general, in Japan.”
Despite the cultural friendliness between the two countries, the fact remains that Japan is still the only country to have had an atomic bomb dropped on it.
According to Nakanishi, whose paternal grandparents were killed in the Hiroshima attack, there are some citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who “would really like to see an American president, as a gesture of peace, come pay their respects to the cities.”
“As much as the U.S. presidents over the years have gone to Japan, none of them have dared go down to Hiroshima or Nagasaki,” Nakanishi said.
Similarly, no sitting Japanese prime minister has visited Pearl Harbor or apologized formally for the attack.
“One of the issues is that Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day is our day,” Marotti said. “A lot of people lost their lives in Pearl Harbor, but if you think about Japan, these markers have different meanings within the larger history of this war.”