U.S.-Japan: What we have learned since Pearl Harbor

Abstract

The contemporary history of Japan started with Pearl Harbor, I believe, because the attack led to Japan’s defeat, and subsequent American occupation of Japan brought democracy to Japan for the first time in the approximately 1,500 years of the nation’s recorded history. When I was studying at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii in early 1977, I joined a tour of Pearl Harbor. During the tour, we were shown a thirty-minute documentary film of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Later I was asked by my colleagues from other countries at the Center how I had felt. My answer was that I had felt bitter at the Japanese Imperial Army’s conduct, but that the incident was behind us and we should learn from it and move on in our relations. I refused to compare the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to Pearl Harbor, because the two incidents were not comparable: Hiroshima resulted from Pearl Harbor. After disarmament of Japanese armed forces, dissolution of business conglomerates that supported Japanese militarism, and the introduction of land reforms and general elections, Japan was well on the road to democracy. Until the late 1950s the word ‘democracy’ was in fashion all over Japan. During this period, Japan imported many things and learned so much with the assistance of the United States and absorbed many aspects of American culture. The reform of the education system was a typical example of democracy. After the system was changed from one which targets the elite students to one which gives equal opportunities to all children and students from the elite to the bottom class of society, the system itself became very democratic