The United States and the Reemergence of Independent Japan

Abstract

JAPAN COMPRISES 85 million people-industrious, hardworking, inventive, Dwight Eisenhower declared in the summer of 1954. Actually, the power they [the Japanese] developed against us in World War II was such as to be frightening when we saw what they could do alone. Consequently, it becomes absolutely mandatory to us, to our safety, that the Japanese nation does not fall under the domination of the Iron Curtain countries, or specifically the Kremlin. Eisenhower went on to describe the consequences of a Communist takeover of its resources: If the Kremlin controls them, all of that great war-making capacity would be turned against the free world .... And the Pacific would become a Communist lake.' For two years after April 1952, when the Japanese peace treaty had formally ended the American occupation restored Japanese sovereignty, American leaders had been urging the Japanese to rearm-to rebuild their military forces as a defense against a possible Communist attack. In mid-1954, Eisenhower continued to affirm that rearmament was necessary, but now he also spoke on a different subject: the need for American support of the Japanese economy. At the time, the president was trying to persuade the American Congress to increase economic aid to Japan, to ease restrictions on Japanese imports to the United States, to drop regulations tying American assistance to a Japanese agreement not to trade with China. Eisenhower recognized that in the United States a narrow concern with budget-balancing, with protecting American industries from Japanese competition, with attempting a continued quarantine of China, might yield short-term benefits; but he also believed that such an approach would eventually prove counterproductive, creating precisely the situation that the United States was seeking to avoid. Japan cannot live, Eisenhower asserted, and cannot remain in the free world unless something is done to allow her to make a living. Now, if we will not give her any money, if we will not trade