These days, the tag line to the title of this dispatch might be, “. and why Japan isn’t likely to remain Japan much longer either.”
John Dower is the author of Embracing Defeat, the Pulitzer Prize winning history of the post-World War II American occupation of Japan — a book evidently read in Washington by Bush planners who like to imagine they’re still living in a movie-inspired version of a World-War-II-ish world, and possibly that they are representatives of a prospective Greatest of All Generations). In a piece in the San Jose Mercury, he takes on the farcical idea that occupying Iraq could possibly replicate the occupation of Japan. It’s a canny piece indeed. What he reminds us is that Iraq is not only not Japan for a bevy of obvious reasons, but – on the crucial, and understandably ignored — side of the equation, this administration bears no resemblance in character or policy to the New Dealers who ran the occupation of Japan.
Our occupying administrators and the companies they are bringing in to “reconstruct” Iraq – despite their highly flattering and high-flown sense of themselves — probably bear a closer relationship to the Japanese of the 1930s who occupied and looted Manchuria for the profit of the “homeland” than to the men who tried to create a democratic tradition in Japan with at least some sense of the interests of the Japanese themselves in mind.
In the meantime, Bush policies, under the guise of repressing weapons of mass destruction globally by force of arms, have actually loosed a violent and frightening (as well as frightened) new form of indiscriminate proliferation on the world. A belligerent, cornered North Korean regime that was never allowed to come in from the cold, and that now claims to have nuclear weapons and is clearly prepared to brandish them, testifies to the “success” of these policies. Under such pressures and given a resurgent right, Japan – Peace Constitution or no – threatens, as Dan Plesch indicates in a Guardian piece below, to become a nuclear power. (And don’t forget South Korea and Taiwan, both quite capable of arming themselves with — in the case of Taiwan — incalculable consequences.) Imagine — this is the insane world we are about to hand our children. Tom
Why Iraq is not Japan
By John W. Dower
The San Jose Mercury
April 27, 2003Who wants to be occupied?
Shigeru Yoshida, the conservative politician who served four terms as prime minister of Japan in the wake of World War II, put the matter succinctly in a later reminiscence about living under Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s “GHQ” (General Headquarters). Whenever he heard the dreaded acronym, Yoshida said, he immediately thought “Go Home Quickly!”
Who wants to be occupied?
Shigeru Yoshida, the conservative politician who served four terms as prime minister of Japan in the wake of World War II, put the matter succinctly in a later reminiscence about living under Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s “GHQ” (General Headquarters). Whenever he heard the dreaded acronym, Yoshida said, he immediately thought “Go Home Quickly!”
The Americans did not do anything of the sort, of course. The occupation of Japan began in August 1945, and MacArthur himself spoke about wrapping things up in a few years (he had his eye on the 1948 presidential election). In fact, occupation authorities did not depart Japan until April 1952. The occupation lasted more than 6 1/2 years, almost twice as long as the Pacific war itself. And today, a half-century later, U.S. forces are still there — overwhelmingly and abrasively in Okinawa, and less blatantly throughout the rest of the Japanese archipelago.
JOHN W. DOWER’S book on the U.S. occupation of Japan — “Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II” — won numerous honors, including the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and a National Book Award. A specialist in Japanese history, Dower is the Elting E. Morison Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He wrote this article for Perspective.
To read more Dower click here
Without the UN safety net, even Japan may go nuclear
The crisis with North Korea may force the Japanese to build the bomb
Dan Plesch
Monday April 28, 2003
The GuardianAfter North Korea, Japan may be next to build the bomb. This possibility is an additional reason for Russia and China – and, indeed, you and me – to be worried about the knock-on effects of the Korean nuclear crisis.
The notion of a Japanese bomb seems extraordinary because people think of Japan as a nation that has been anti-nuclear since Hiroshima. Japan is a world leader in supporting the UN and it is also at the forefront of UN disarmament efforts, especially to control the spread of rifles and handguns in the developing world. But there has been a long-standing debate in Japan about whether to build the bomb, and today domestic and international pressures are edging Japan towards the nuclear option.
Pressures to take a stronger military stance have already resulted in Japan having the world’s fourth largest defence spending and a larger navy than Britain’s.
Dan Plesch is senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and author of Sheriff and Outlaws in the Global Village (Menard Press)