In the aftermath of the Nixon shocks C. Fred Bergston wrote in Foreign Affairs that "the new economic approach, coupled with the coming presidential visits to Peking and Moscow, produced the most bizarre U.S. foreign policy imaginable: war on our friends, concessions to our traditional adversaries."(1) The Nixon shocks signalled the opening of a new era in Japan - U.S. relations but it also inaugurated a new stage in the scholarship on the Pacific alliance. Alarmed by the growing tensions between the two countries, government specialists and academics met regularly during the next two decades to take the pulse of the alliance and check its vital signs. A common lament running through most of these studies was that somehow the value of the alliance had never been appreciated in the United States.(2)
At times it has seemed as though high ranking officials or influential outsiders were barely aware of the security treaty's existence. In an address on the future of the post-Cold War world, William Hyland, the retiring editor of Foreign Affairs, spoke exclusively about conditions in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. His only reference to the security pact was a prediction that Japan and the United States would probably go their separate ways. Recently, Lawrence Eagleburger, who served in key policymaking positions in several administrations, gave an address in which he constantly referred to America's security commitment to the Republic of China. He did not mention Japan except to refer to the perpetual trade frictions between Tokyo and Washington. How is it that America's mutual security pact with Taipei, which was allowed to lapse in 1979, seems to have taken on a life of its own, while the American treaty with Japan, now in its fifth decade, barely registers in the mind of American officialdom? Perhaps one reason for this indifference lies in the misleading use of the term alliance to describe a wide variety of international arrangements. All alliances are not alike. Attempts to measure the American-Japanese treaty against some standardized criteria may be of limited value to historians.(3) Comparisons can be useful, but historians are likely to learn more about the place of Japan in American strategy if they broaden the perspective to take into account the other Asian pacts Washington joined during the same period. A deeper perspective, one that takes into account the differing views of those who negotiated and attended to the functioning of the treaty on a daily basis would also provide us with an appreciation of how the pact was viewed at different levels of the American government. Finally, lengthening our perspective to place the development of the security treaty into the longer sweep of American-Japanese relations may also produce a better understanding of the what was and was not accomplished during the first twenty-five years of the postwar era.
In taking the long view of American-Japanese relations one sees little to suggest that the two countries could find enough common interests to form the foundation for a firm and lasting political-military relationship. As Charles Neu observed in the mid-1970s, the American-Japanese relationship had been a "Troubled Encounter" in which Americans too readily assumed Japan to be malleable and eager to adopt American values.(4) For most of the century Americans failed to understand Japanese interests or the workings of the Japanese government.(5) Brief periods of constructive statesmanship in the early 1900s, and again in the early 1920s, had been overshadowed by long stretches of neglect. According to Neu, even during the early years of the Cold War the shared interest in security and Japanese reconstruction failed to produce "a real closeness" in perceptions of the world. Writing after the end of the Vietnam War and America's rediscovery of China, Neu wondered if the collaboration of the early postwar era might turn out to be only another brief interlude in a relationship characterized, at least on America's part, by indifference or animosity.
The alliance persisted, of course, but that does not negate the value of Neu's assessment of American-Japanese relations in the twentieth century. Indeed, in some respects the various papers in this joint undertaking are being written to explain why the alliance persisted beyond the 1970s. Perhaps the answer lies in a shared appreciation of the very limitations of those relations. Statesmen on both sides of the Pacific may recognize that there is little beyond the formal treaty provisions that binds America to Japan. Nevertheless, the consequences of drift and indifference are remembered well enough to ensure that the formal ties, however unappreciated, endure.
Turning to those earlier periods of constructive statesmanship, one finds that mutual self-restraint rather than close cooperation formed the basis of understanding. Like the Anglo-Japanese alliance of the same era, the Japanese-American rapprochement was the product of government elites in both countries. Unlike the first Anglo-Japanese alliance, however, the Taft-Katsura exchange was not aimed at a common threat. Theodore Roosevelt shared Japan's suspicions of Russian designs in Northeast Asia, but unlike the Japanese he did not believe Russian machinations endangered America's vital interests.(6) The threat that Roosevelt sought protection from was not Russia, but Japan. In practical terms this meant acquiescence in Japanese expansion into Korea in exchange for Tokyo's recognition of American interests in the Philippines. It was the barest of agreements, lacking broad support or understanding in the United States, and requiring little in the way institutionalized and regular consultation between the two governments.
It did not take long for the recurrence of anti-Japanese sentiment in America to expose the tenuousness of Roosevelt's policy. Even more disturbing, from Tokyo's perspective, were his successor's attempts at a more activist policy on the Asian mainland. As Akira Iriye notes, the disagreements between Japan and the United States over how best to respond to nationalism in Asia, particularly in China, would become a recurring theme in U.S. - Japanese relations.(7) The growth of Japanese and American tensions over China coincided with a general awakening of colonial resistance to the European-centered international system. World War I weakened the European system and produced the first powerful surge in Third World nationalism. In China, two of the colonial powers, Germany and Russia, had been removed. Britain, which had sought Japanese assistance in protecting its stake in China, was a declining power. The way was open for the rising powers, Japan and the United States, to exert greater influence on the shape of the postwar system in Asia.
At the time of the Versailles Conference the difference between American and Japanese approaches to Chinese nationalism were clearly in evidence. Three years later Japan grudgingly accepted American ground rules for conduct in China. The Nine Power Treaty still permitted great power exploitation of China but it placed limits on those abuses by setting as a long-range objective the development of an independent China firmly integrated into the international economic system. As Iriye notes, the degree to which Japan actually altered its approach to China remains a subject of dispute. For the purposes of this paper it is more significant to note that American and Japanese agreement over China did not serve as the basis for more lasting cooperation between the two countries.
Once more American racism, in the form of the Japanese exclusion provision of the National Origins Act, shattered hopes for a more cordial relationship. But it was the differing responses to China's resurgent nationalism that created the most concern in Tokyo even before the onset of the Great Depression. Distance from the scene and the relatively minor nature of its economic interests in China allowed the United States to adopt a policy of sympathy for Chinese nationalist aspirations, at least in the abstract. In contrast, Japan's vital stake on the mainland, its fear of rising Soviet power and its perception of Chinese communism as the vanguard of that power, led to a parting of the ways between Tokyo and Washington. In the 1930s pleas from American "realists" for a revival of Theodore Roosevelt's cautious diplomacy towards Japan went unheeded. Balance of power politics tinged with anti-communism provided an insufficient basis on which to build a cooperative relationship.(8) Japan seemed out of step with a changing world and too insensitive to Chinese nationalism. After 1938 recommendations for realpolitik in Asia bore the stigma of appeasement. As Japanese policy became more opportunistic, American diplomacy stiffened. Negotiation could not bridge the chasm that separated the two nations' approach to China. As Waldo Heinrichs has shown, the maelstrom created by the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union fused the regional struggles in Europe and Asia into one great conflict. In the summer of 1941, with the outcome of the German campaign still in doubt, American and Japanese officials reacted with "a lust for action" that made war all but inevitable.(9)
For most of the conflict American war aims, total victory and unconditional surrender, left little room for contemplating alternatives. But by early 1945, as victory over Japan seemed assured, some American officials began to reconsider the future of postwar East Asia in terms that echoed the earlier concerns of the "realists." In April 1945, Admiral Charles Cooke, the head of the navy's Strategic Plans Division, advised Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest King that the best way to end the war would be with a "strengthened CHINA and with a JAPAN thrown back to her homeland, incapable of renewed aggression, on the one hand, but, at the same time, not completely eliminated as a party to the stabilization in EASTERN ASIA and the WESTERN PACIFIC. With a strong RUSSIA in the FAR EAST, JAPAN and CHINA will seek the help of the UNITED STATES, and a situation will be set up in the relations of the four powers which will tend to stabilize itself and therefore promote world peace."(10) After the war, "Savvy" Cooke recalled that in the spring of 1945 he wondered "How was this vacuum to be filled? Who was to maintain an acceptable balance of power in the Far East? Even while recognizing, applauding, and urging the necessity for destructive bombing of Japanese cities, I observed to Commander [William] Sebald, our expert on Japan, in Washington, that we would probably live to regret the wholesale destruction." "How much more would we have cause for regret," he added, "if we had completed the destruction of Japan by an all-out invasion?"(11)
Cooke's concern over the cost of an invasion, not only to American forces, but also for Japan seems to have been shared by many of the officials in the Truman administration, who urged the new president to modify American demands for unconditional surrender in June and July of that year. Such proponents of a "soft peace" as former ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and navy secretary James Forrestal, all recorded their worries about Soviet expansion in East Asia at the end of the war.(12) Fearing that the ashes of Japan's cities would provide fertile ground for the growth of Japanese radicalism, which in turn would lead to Japan's alignment with the Soviet Union, these Republican advisers to the Democratic president urged Truman to offer Tokyo a way out of the war by clarifying unconditional surrender. Specifically, they wanted the president to tell the Japanese they could keep the emperor. Critics of the proposal like former secretary of state Cordell Hull and assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson opposed any "appeasement" of the enemy and derided Grew as an "emperor worshiper." Nevertheless, Grew, Stimson, and Forrestal believed that a quick end to the war was necessary to protect American postwar interests in Asia.
In recommending a policy that would preserve conservative rule in Japan, the thinking of American officials did not extend to the possibility of creating a rearmed Japan as an ally of the United States. Rather, their primary concern was in preventing a communist revolution in Japan that would place the country's resources at the disposal of a potential enemy.(13) Doubts about China's future provided an additional momentum to this line of thinking. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) agreed that the primary objective of the coming campaigns should be control of Japan and denial of its resources to an outside power.(14) In the summer of 1945, the pursuit of victory over Japan forced the Joint Chiefs to think in terms of limits and constraints.(15) Contemplating the movement of Soviet forces into Manchuria and Korea, and anticipating continued internal strife in China, the army's strategic planners concluded that American security could be assured by denying control of Japan to a future adversary.
In the end, neither the advocates of a New Deal for Japan nor their conservative adversaries were completely satisfied. The emperor was spared, but only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed and Russia entered the war. The decision to govern through the existing administrative machinery left the Japanese in a position to thwart economic reforms, but changes in personnel in Washington and the surprising emergence of a reform-minded General Douglas MacArthur as head of the occupation meant that the liberals would also have their innings.
The sudden end of the war did, however, lift the constraints on American military operations on the mainland of Asia. By the end of September there were more American military personnel in China than had served there at any time in the war. The unexpected collapse of Japanese resistance produced another unexpected development. During the fall of 1945, Japanese troops remained in China to guard rail lines from Chinese Communist forces while Guomindang armies advanced inland to extend their control over north China. Although officials in Washington explained that removing the armed Japanese would be a delicate and time-consuming process, Dean Acheson later admitted that the former enemy's forces were needed to hold vital communications for the Nationalists.(16) The Americans, who were intercepting and deciphering Japanese diplomatic messages, knew that the Japanese were inclined to cooperate in this venture. On August 21, a circular issued by the Japanese embassy in Nanking, and deciphered in Washington, revealed that the Japanese would "cooperate in the reconstruction of China.... However, we should punish hostile elements if Yenan maintains its anti-Japanese attitude."(17) Given that the Chinese Communists were determined to take the territory held by Japanese troops in order to improve their own position against the Nationalists, continued skirmishing seemed assured.
This first improvised effort at an American-Japanese anti-communist alliance did not get very far. The president and his secretary of state, James Byrnes, still hoped they could settle the complex problems of postwar Asia through negotiation with the Soviet Union and by bringing pressure to bear on the competing parties in China. Although opinion within the Washington remained divided, most Americans continued to believe that international cooperation, rather than geopolitics, offered the best hope for peace.(18) In November, the administration dispatched the recently retired General George C. Marshall to China in an effort to avert a civil war. The continued reliance on Japanese troops no longer seemed necessary or to achieve order in Asia. Nor did it seem practical, given the insistent demands of congressman and their constituents to bring the boys back home. If, as the administration said, the Marines were in China to evacuate the Japanese, then the Japanese would have to be repatriated before the Marines came home. During the following year the Japanese were removed from China and most of the Marines soon followed. The Russians also withdrew their forces from Manchuria early in 1946. The millennium had not arrived in Asia, but early in 1946 one could see portents if one looked hard enough. The proposed Japanese constitution with its famous article IX renouncing war might be taken as one indication of the opening of a new era. Historians disagree over whether MacArthur proposed the idea of a peace constitution or merely accepted the Japanese decision to include a renunciation of war in their new frame of government. In any case, what appears most striking for the purposes of this paper is that MacArthur's dream of a Far Eastern Switzerland appears not to have disturbed any of his colleagues in the Pentagon. How do we account for this apparent lack of concern among military planners who only several years later would expend considerable effort to undo MacArthur's handiwork?
A partial answer can be found in the difficulty military strategists found in adjusting their thinking to the new circumstances they confronted after the war. In the year after Japan's surrender, American military planners found themselves waging a new kind of struggle on several fronts. Domestic pressure to withdraw American forces and reduce commitments around the world, congressional demands to cut spending, and the State Department's plans to turn the captured Pacific islands into United Nations' trusteeships bedeviled strategists and scrambled efforts to develop coherent plans. The unsettled situation only reinforced the Joint Chiefs' inclination to follow through on earlier plans and hang on to what they already controlled. The former Japanese Mandates and Okinawa fell into this category. So did the home islands, but here the thinking was in terms of keeping Japan down and denying its war making potential to a future enemy. As already noted, the JCS were not indifferent to the potential for conflict with the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, they had based their postwar plans on the assumption that the United States would lack the power to shape events on the Asian mainland. Postwar defense planning for Asia had been cast in negative terms, the objective was to deny an aggressor bases from which to launch an attack. The influence of wartime planning for Japan and the possibility that a united China might yet emerge from the war may explain the apparent lack of interest on the part of the Joint Chiefs to the new Japanese constitution.(19) It is doubtful that the Chiefs ever shared MacArthur's enthusiasm for a disarmed Japan or that they placed much faith in the possibilities of international cooperation with the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, in the immediate postwar period the place of Japan in their strategic plans accorded with the prevailing public mood about the best means of preventing war.(20) Any sense of tranquility that might have been gained by the departure of foreign troops from Chinese soil was quickly lost when the fragile truce Marshall had negotiated was broken. Despite Marshall's repeated efforts to patch together a peace, the increasing number of clashes between the Communists and Nationalists made civil war all but inevitable. Convinced that he could count on American support, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek seized the opportunity presented by the withdrawal of Soviet forces to eliminate his Communist rivals once and for all. In this regard, Chiang greatly miscalculated. Despite the apparent assurances he received from the presence of American military advisers in China, the United States was not prepared to pour troops or money into a China racked by civil war.
Instead, attention turned to Japan and efforts to bolster that nation's flagging economy as a means of preventing the further erosion of the American position in Asia. The story of the reverse course and the role played by various Americans in and out of government is well known by now. American cooperation with Japan's ruling conservative elite seemed reminiscent of the earlier prewar moments of cooperation, but few Americans embraced the earlier strategy of using Japanese military power to thwart Russian ambitions in Northeast Asia. Instead, the advocates of ending the Occupation emphasized the need to prevent Japan from falling into the hands of hostile forces.(21)
Paradoxically, the JCS opposed an early peace treaty because they feared that Japan, once free of the American controls, would eventually realign itself with the communist powers in Asia. The Chiefs argued that the loss of Japan would deprive them of a vital base of operations and place Japan's industrial potential at the disposal of the Soviet Union. By 1949, American military planners had reconstituted their war plans in such a way as to make Japan an important point of attack against the Soviet Union. The primary objective of these plans was still to deny Japan's war making potential to the enemy, but a new offensive scheme had been layered on top of the older defensive strategy. Not surprisingly, the air force, which sought to ring the Soviet Union with bases, settled into Misawa and other airfields, including those on Okinawa. The navy also found a new reason to stay on in Japan. Under the direction of Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Forrest Sherman, the navy adopted a new maritime strategy that called for carrier task groups to destroy the Soviet Union's Pacific naval and air forces at their source by striking Soviet bases and airfields. With the loss of Tsingtao on the China coast, the former Japanese naval base at Yokosuka became even more desirable as a staging area for the American fleet. Before the outbreak of the Korean War, bureaucratic self-interest more than strategic necessity gave the army a reason to hang on in Japan. Maintaining its position in Japan gave the army control of more favorable terrain from which to wage the battle of the budget. In short, the Joint Chiefs were prepared to block a peace treaty unless they could assure their continued control of bases in Japan deemed necessary to American security. If anything, the Korean War and the recall of MacArthur only increased their leverage over those in the State Department who wanted to end the Occupation.(22)
The JCS found an ally of sorts in Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru. Yoshida's emphasis on economic recovery and his hostility to Japanese rearmament left him resigned to the prospect of American bases in the home islands, especially after those bases became essential for the prosecution of the war on the peninsula. The JCS would have welcomed Japanese rearmament, within limits of course, but maintenance of American bases in the home islands and Ryukyus came first. The JCS gained their objective, but the continuation of American dominion over Japan set the stage for persistence friction within the alliance. The disagreements within the American government also revealed a divergence of views between State Department specialists and military strategists over Japan's contribution to American security. During the next decade the State Department specialists would tend to be more receptive to Japanese complaints about the security treaty. The diplomats tended to view Japanese cooperation with American political programs, alignment with the U.S.-led coalition and isolation of the PRC, as the main objective. The defense of Japan was essential, of course, but the Japan specialists in State argued that without Tokyo's cooperation, American military bases were a liability. The JCS and their representatives in Japan also emphasized the need for Japanese cooperation. For the Chiefs, however, cooperation was defined as Japanese willingness to contribute to the defense of the main islands and political support for the changing requirements of American offensive weaponry based in Japan.
By the late 1950s these differences in approaches to the problem of Japanese cooperation led to sharp exchanges between the State Department and the Pentagon. Notwithstanding these very real differences, it appears that when the alliance was formed, neither the JCS nor the State Department seriously envisioned a rearmed Japan participating in broader regional defense programs. Little else was required of Japan beyond tolerating an American presence. Of course the absence of mutuality in the treaty was a political embarrassment, for Japan and the United States, but otherwise it was of little military significance. As Martin Weinstein has shown, the Yoshida realized that it would be impossible for the United States to defend its numerous bases scattered throughout the home islands, without also defending Japan. Yoshida also believed, correctly as it turned out, that over time the United States would recognize the need to consult with Japanese officials before employing American forces outside of the home islands. He also expected the Americans to realize that Japan faced little real danger of invasion. Here too he was correct.
Given the history of the relations between the two nations it is not surprising that in 1951 the Americans did not expect and the Japanese did not desire greater military cooperation outside of the home islands. The JCS hoped for greater Japanese participation in the future, but for the remainder of the period covered by this paper, Japanese policy and American strategic requirements never converged in a way that made greater cooperation outside of Japan necessary. The advent of the Cold War had not altered the place of Asia in American global priorities. Even during the Korean War, Europe remained the main theater for the United States.(23) Simply put, East Asia ranked third behind Europe and the Mediterranean as areas of concern for military planners. The JCS could be satisfied with a treaty that denied Japan's resources to the enemy and provided bases for operations against the PRC and the Soviet Union's Asian defenses. The war, if it came, would be won elsewhere.
During the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, American planning for a general war tended to undermine efforts to hasten the pace of Japanese rearmament. Eisenhower's New Look strategy is best known for its reliance on nuclear weaponry, but a key element in the president's defense policy was the redeployment of American forces. Troops were withdrawn, slowly at first, from Korea and Japan, but no similar draw-down occurred in Europe. Indeed, JCS chairman Arthur Radford's private proposal for a "rationalization" of American deployments in Germany created such a furor that the administration had to deny anything of the sort was being contemplated.(24)
For deployments in Japan, however, budgetary concerns outweighed all others. During the 1950s the JCS insisted that Japan needed to create an army of 348,000 to ward off raids and maintain internal security. Eisenhower appears to have regarded this figure as unrealistic. On at least two occasions, one in 1955 the other 1957, the administration embarrassed its officials in Japan by declaring its intent to withdraw forces without first preparing Tokyo for the announcement. Following the second episode, the American commander in Japan complained that Washington was undermining his efforts to prod the Japanese into increasing their ground forces. How could he convince the Japanese that such a move was necessary, he asked, if the Pentagon believed it was safe to withdraw its own troops whenever it saw fit?(25) As these incidents suggest, during the Eisenhower administration, some American officials were moving toward de facto agreement with one of the main assumptions of Yoshida's defense policy: Japan was not threatened by invasion. As H.W. Brands has shown, it did not take Eisenhower long to accept the corollary to Yoshida's policy, namely that Japan could make its biggest contribution to the anti-communist coalition by building a healthy economy.(26)
Japan remained important to the JCS in the 1950s, but once again the emphasis was on denying control of the home islands to the enemy. In the event of war with the Soviet Union, plans called for the withdrawal of troops from South Korea and the establishment of defensive positions on the off-shore island chain. Tactical air power would defend the approaches to islands. The navy also shifted to a defensive posture. Increases in Soviet air power in the Far East made the offensive operations of the pre-Korean War maritime strategy less practical. The number of carriers in the Western Pacific was also reduced after the armistice. Of the seven carriers assigned to that region, four were designated for transfer to other theaters in the event of a general war.(27) Instead of massing for an assault on Soviet airfields and submarine pens, the navy's main task in the first weeks of a general war would be to guard Japan's Sea Lines of Communication.
Within this defensive scheme, the JCS planned for increasing cooperation with the newly formed Self Defense Forces (SDF). Cooperation in coastal and air defense proceeded more smoothly than efforts to rebuild the ground forces, but here too the Americans encountered difficulties. To meet the threat of Soviet-Chinese air power in Northeast Asia, the JCS countered with Nike anti-aircraft missiles and new jet aircraft. To accommodate this new weaponry, the Americans needed to obtain more land around existing bases. Each new intrusion into Japanese farmland for runway extensions and launch sites provoked protests, picketing, and rallies by irate farmers and opponents of the alliance. It is hard to know what irritated American commanders more, public opposition to the base improvements, or the Tokyo government's tepid statements accepting but not supporting the acquisitions.(28)
The frustrations of the American-Japanese security arrangement only grew with the replacement of Yoshida by Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichiro. Hatoyama's efforts to act more independently while remaining within the confines of the security treaty seems to have especially infuriated Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. The secretary's warnings of reprisals if Tokyo relaxed trade restrictions with the Peoples' Republic of China and settled the Kuriles controversy on terms favorable to the Soviets must have left Hatoyama wondering what Dulles meant when he lectured the Japanese on assuming their "rightful place in Asia."(29) As late as June 1957, Dulles's annoyance with Japan led him tell the ambassador to Japan that if the new Kishi government was "simply trying to ease us out and then be independent, we should find this out, and probably pull out on our own."(30) That Dulles would think that Kishi wanted to shake free of the security pact suggests the degree of misunderstanding between the secretary and the Japanese. In any event, the United States was not ready to pull out on its own. The bases in Japan provided essential logistical support for America's other Asian allies and housed the seventh fleet's massive oil reserves. The United States would maintain its bases in Japan but try to lower its profile on the home islands by cutting further its ground forces stationed there.
In the years following the Korean armistice, American diplomats often found themselves in the position of mediating between American military officials and the Japanese government. Convinced that American legal rights were essentially meaningless without Japanese cooperation, American diplomats nudged their uniformed brethren to seek accommodation with their hosts. As one specialist recalled, reaching compromise between the U.S. and Japan on base rights and other issues was a "difficult process involving strong emotions on both sides and a constant effort to balance the political realities in Japan with U.S. strategic requirements in Asia."(31)
Although the reward for the patience displayed on both sides was an improvement in the security relationship, there may have been a hidden price as well. In retrospect it would appear that the redeployment of American forces, Japanese progress on re-armament, however limited, and the relatively low priority given to Japan as an area of offensive operations in JCS war plans, made successful diplomacy possible. But it also seems to have reduced the perceived value of the security pact to the JCS. The diplomats viewed compromises with Japan as necessary to the long-term health of the partnership. The Joint Chiefs, on the other hand, were more likely to view their position in Japan at the end of the decade as the result of a series of retreats. The military's bureaucratic stake in the pact also became less significant with the changes in strategy adopted during the 1950s. The Tactical Air Command still needed its bases, but the Strategic Air Command, which wielded the most clout on Capitol Hill, was based outside the home islands in deference to Japan's nuclear aversion. The army's interest in Japan also diminished as a result of the steady erosion of its forces. The navy still clung to the prized Yokosuka base and its job of defending the sea lanes around Japan was an important mission. Like the army, however, the navy wielded less influence in Washington during the heyday of the New Look.
Both branches of the armed forces found fault with Eisenhower's strategy, complaining that improvements in the Soviet Union's nuclear capability undermined the credibility of the American deterrent and made conventional warfare along the Asian rim more probable. To compensate for these perceived strategic and budgetary shortcomings, officers in the army and navy emphasized the need to prepare for limited warfare. For the army and navy, the nation's next challenge seemed to be taking shape in Southeast Asia.(32)
Although Japan was relegated to a minor role in the JCS's planning for war with the Soviet union, it remained to be seen how America's ally might contribute to the regional patchwork of security arrangements that were in place by the 1950s. By the mid-1950s the United States had entered into bilateral security agreements with Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the Republics of Korea and China (Taiwan). SEATO, although it did not require a military commitment from the United States, misleadingly provided the appearance of completion to these arrangements. In reality, regional defense in Asia lacked the coherence and consensus of purpose that led to the creation of NATO. The ANZUS pact was formed primarily as a hedge against Japanese remilitarization but later evolved into an anti-communist pact. The treaty with Korea compensated the Rhee regime for Washington's unwillingness to re-unite the peninsula. The Eisenhower administration's security pact with Taipei served to reassure Chiang of American support for the defense of Taiwan and gain acceptance for a de facto two China policy. Similarities could be found between these ad hoc arrangements and the well-known objectives of NATO. Like the European alliance these separate treaties were designed to keep the former enemy down and the new communist one out. They also provided assurance that the Americans would remain in. But there is no European analogue for the role the Korean and Chinese treaties played in restraining America's allies from embarking on their own campaigns against the enemy. The Asian system, if it can be called that, also lacked the locally inspired efforts at integrated defense planning that preceded the Atlantic alliance. Finally, and most significantly, Japan did not assume a role in Asia comparable to Germany's place in NATO.
American officials occasionally voiced support for a larger Japanese role in regional defense. (Dulles once even suggested that the Japanese take responsibility for defending the Philippines). As far as Japanese leaders were concerned, however, such an expansion of military responsibility was out of the question. Not surprisingly, there was little enthusiasm for the idea in elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region. Australia and New Zealand protested plans to loan Japan a large training submarine in 1954 and Korea's Syngman Rhee denounced any plan to strengthen Japanese forces. Despite the universal opposition to Japanese rearmament expressed by America's allies, it seems clear these objections would have been overcome if the Japanese government desired a greater role in American military strategy.
As mentioned, however, the Japanese government did not believe that more than token rearmament was needed to deal with the Soviet threat. Nor did Tokyo share American attitudes towards the PRC or Southeast Asia. In particular the Japanese government grew increasingly concerned by the militarization of the American containment policy directed against the mainland. During the 1950s the Americans and Japanese seemed to undergo a reversal of roles in dealing with Asian nationalism.(33) American-Japanese disagreements over how best to respond to Chinese communism and other communist-led nationalist movements in Asia were destined to become another point of friction in the alliance. If, as many historians have argued, the United States became involved in the Vietnam War to preserve Southeast Asia as a market and source of raw materials for Japan's development, American ire is easily understood. A preliminary survey of the subject raises important questions about the extent to which American officials actually viewed Southeast Asia as vital to Japan's recovery. According to John Dower, one of the first American historians to advance this argument, Japan was the Asian domino that most concerned Eisenhower. After tracing Japan's appearances "in and out" of the Pentagon Papers, Dower concluded that as early as the Truman administration American officials became convinced that Japanese recovery depended on access to the markets and raw materials of Southeast Asia. Trade with mainland China, now that it was under communist control, seemed out of the question. Japan would have to find its empire to the South again, only this time with America's blessing.(34) Later historians re-enforced this thesis by citing numerous references in government planning papers that highlighted the importance of the "Great Crescent" to Japan.(35)
The evidence of American infatuation with this scheme is overwhelming. Vexed by the sluggish pace of Japan's recovery and alarmed by Southeast Asia's disarray, American officials seemed to have hit on an elegant solution to both problems. As appealing as the idea of a Japanese-Southeast Asian partnership may have appeared in theory, however, there were numerous obstacles preventing its execution. Foremost among these was the hostility Japan's neighbors felt toward their former occupier. Few Asian nationalists were prepared to countenance a plan that opened their country to Japanese neocolonialism. Moreover, much of the region remained under European control during the period when the Great Crescent plans began circulating. Disconnecting those colonies from the imperial powers and then hitching them to Japan was at best a long-term project. Equally important, American development policies were often at odds with the larger goal of regional integration. During this period, preferential trade agreements continued to link the United States and the Philippines. On Taiwan, American economic teams approved state-directed policies to restrict imports and feed industrial development. Conversely, Taiwanese agricultural exports to Japan were hindered by trade barriers approved during the Occupation. By the mid-1950s the Republic of China, with American urging, was ready to embark on a program of export-based development.(36) Small wonder that former Occupation official Richard Finn has dismissed the Great Crescent policy as an idea cooked up in the Pentagon but left half-baked throughout the 1950s.(37)
As much as American officials repeated the boilerplate phrases about the importance of Southeast Asia to Japanese recovery, it seems clear that they understood that other means had to be found to revive America's new ally. By late 1949, George Kennan, who as head of the State Department's policy planning staff first broached the idea of a Japan-Southeast Asian nexus, concluded that Japan should be permitted to trade with the newly formed PRC.(38) Secretary of State Dean Acheson agreed. An economic blockade of the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC) would "make Japan a pensioner of the United States," he told congress.(39) Acheson's plan for Japanese trade with the mainland was one of the first casualties of the Korean War. But to ensure that the secretary would not revive the idea, Dulles exacted a pledge from Yoshida to enter into formal relations with the government on Taiwan as a price for congressional support of the peace treaty.(40)
The infamous "Yoshida letter" complicated Japanese approaches to the PRC, as did the China differential in allied trade restrictions, but Tokyo remained determined to reopen its economic ties with the mainland. In 1954, however, Eisenhower seemed equally determined to prevent closer ties between to Japan and the mainland. In his famous press conference, the president likened the resource rich nations of Southeast Asia to a row of dominos, the toppling of which would lead Japan to gravitate "toward Communist China to live." Soon afterward, however, Eisenhower began to lessen his opposition to trade between the PRC and Japan. Given his belief that Japan's recovery should receive top priority, it is not surprising that the president seemed more willing to tolerate a loosening of trade restrictions. The president believed that forcing trade into unnatural patterns was politically and economically unsound. The China differential antagonized America's allies and sapped the vitality of the Japanese economy. An economic conservative, Eisenhower also scotched efforts to create a development bank for Southeast Asia, choosing instead to rely on private investment. Ultimately, Eisenhower turned to the growing markets of the industrialized West, including the United States, to save Japan.(41)
Speaking at Gettysburg College in 1959 the president nicely summarized the shifting nature of his administration's economic policies in Asia. After beginning his speech with a description of the economic and political challenges faced by Vietnam, the president turned next to Japan. "One of Japan's greatest opportunities for increased trade lies in a free and developing Southeast Asia....The two regions complement each other markedly," he declared. But, according to Eisenhower, owing to the insecurity of Southeast Asia that connection would only come about gradually . "Japan must have additional outlets now," he explained. "These can be provided if each of the industrial nations of the West does its part in liberalizing trade relations with Japan." Eisenhower's speech, which at first glance appeared to be a reprise of the Great Crescent idea, and has been read as such by some, was in the final analysis a plea for non-discrimination against Japanese goods in the industrial nations.(42) Clearly, the president was not willing to tie Japan's recovery to the fate of Indochina. Instead, he eased restrictions on trade with China, won Japan's admission into GATT, and wherever possible lowered barriers to Japanese goods in the United States. In doing so he confronted opposition from the JCS, who predicted that Japan's example would lead to a slackening of anti-communist resolve throughout Asia, and from Congress, which feared Japanese competition with domestic textile manufactures. Nevertheless, the president patiently maneuvered between these obstacles to improve Japan's trading opportunities.
By the late 1950s a pattern was emerging in the American-Japanese relationship that would carry over well into the next decade. Economic policy involved officials at the highest levels of government, including the president, but the daily business of managing the security pact had become the responsibility of the career diplomats and Japan specialists. It was their unpleasant task to educate their military colleagues on the need to surrender dominion over Japan.
The inclusion of language in the preamble of the 1960 revised treaty concerning economic cooperation indicated Japan's continued adherence to the foreign policy priorities first implemented by Yoshida. The furor that accompanied the ratification of the 1960 agreement provided American and Japanese officials some uneasy moments to be sure. Nevertheless, the pact survived the anti-treaty rioting because the inevitability of the agreement was taken for granted on both sides of the Pacific. Tadashi Aruga has suggested that an attitude of dependence on the United States led Japanese protestors to believe they could count on indulgence from the Americans. While such a view is hardly complimentary to the Japanese, the reasons for American sufferance may actually be even less flattering. According to historian Roger Buckley most Americans barely noticed what was happening in Japan.(43) This indifference extended to high level officials in the Kennedy administration, most of whom gave scant attention to Japan policy. This period of benign neglect was probably useful after the 1960 riots, but it was made possible by the relatively low salience of the security treaty in the thinking of most administration officials, including those in the Pentagon. According to John Welfield's close reading of the treaty's provisions, the U.S. retained many of the advantages it held before revisions.(44) Recently declassified State and Defense Department documents related to the negotiation of the 1960 treaty indicate that whatever advantages the United States retained, American officials were convinced that, once again, they had given way to Japanese requests. According to the available documentation, it appears that State and Defense Department representatives were resigned to accepting a continuation of Japan's supporting role in Asian containment. Late in 1960, Douglas MacArthur II, the American ambassador in Tokyo recounted a variety of ways in which the United States had moved to address Japanese concerns over the security treaty. Such concessions were necessary to maintain the alliance, he added, even though Japanese rearmament remained inadequate for the task of self-defense. Although greater Japanese participation in regional defense remained only a dim prospect for the indefinite future, Japan was beginning to play a significant role in the economic development of other anti-communist countries in Asia and Africa. According to the ambassador, however, the real importance of the pact was that it allowed the United States to use the home islands to support its regional strategy and reduced the possibility of Japanese neutralism. Thus, after nearly a decade Japan continued to make its biggest contribution to the alliance by staying out of the Communist orbit.(45)
In some respects the internal haggling over the revision of the first security treaty served as a dress rehearsal for the later quarrels over Okinawa. On the other hand, the intensity of disagreement between the State Department and the JCS over Okinawa made the disputes over the 1960 treaty seem genteel by comparison. The Joint Chiefs' gradual accommodation with the Japanese government on force levels and improved coordination of air defenses did not translate into a more equal partnership on Okinawa. If anything, the loss of freedom of movement in the home islands only made the JCS more determined to maintain its dominion over Okinawa. That tendency seemed warranted by the threat posed to Southeast Asia by a radical and seemingly unpredictable China. To compensate for its weakness in Southeast Asia, the Eisenhower administration sought to shore up its allies by arming and training indigenous forces and linking them in a regional defense pact (SEATO). By 1960, the JCS were also preparing for limited interventions using marine (later army) units based on Okinawa and supported by repositioned tactical air forces.(46)
Upholding the military's prerogatives on the island during the early 1960s was General Paul Caraway. The general's stout defense of the military's imperial bastion earned him special mention in the memoirs of three of the diplomatic participants in the reversion negotiations. The normally reserved Ambassador Edwin Reischauer described Caraway as "rigid" "bull-headed" and "autocratic." Caraway justified his doggedness on the Okinawa issue by reverting to language that harkened to an earlier era in Japanese-American relations. "Far from adopting an isolationist, inward-looking policy, Japan was wholly expansionist in the 1930s, and indeed to the end of World War II - and beyond. The Japanese still cannot believe that the United States has set them up in business again, and/or that the United States could be so timorous, really in asking that this country have a fair shake from Japan in the Western Pacific."(47)
John Welfield sees Caraway's blunt statement as an indication that the United States had begun to reassess the basic assumptions that had guided its relations with Japan since the late 1940s. More research is need to determine if such was the case or if the general's remarks were actually a hangover from the Pacific War. During the war Caraway had served with General Albert Wedemeyer in the China theater. While on duty he had formed close friendships with Guomindang officers and witnessed first-hand the devastation wrought by the Japanese. Those experiences probably reinforced his determination to hold on to territory that had been so dearly paid for in the war.
Once Caraway was removed, the diplomats eventually prevailed, but not before taking their share of lumps from the uniformed services. Once again, the main argument was that without the willing participation of the Japanese, American rights on the island were meaningless. As in the revision of the security treaty, the career diplomats argued that agreement on Okinawa's reversion to Japanese sovereignty should be reached before the issue caused another political storm in Tokyo. However persuasive these arguments may have been, it appears the logjam was not broken until the Defense Department became convinced that Okinawa was no longer needed as a base for nuclear weapons. The island's military value still remained, especially during the Vietnam War, but it appears that Okinawa's place in the security relationship was equalled by the role that reversion could play in alleviating America's economic distress. In 1967 Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk signalled that reversion might be more easily accomplished if Japan purchased more American military equipment, liberalized its trade practices, and directed more aid to Southeast Asia. In 1968, Under Secretary of State Eugene Rostow travelled to Tokyo to deliver the same message.(48) As the United States escalated its involvement in Vietnam, officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations betrayed a lingering suspicion about the success of American efforts in Japan after World War II. During the early 1960s the efforts of the Ikeda government to strengthen economic ties with the PRC underscored the divisions within the alliance over China policy. Japan's overtures to the PRC also fueled American concerns about the psychological impact of an American defeat in Asia. In 1961, vice-president Lyndon Johnson warned that if Vietnam fell, communism would sweep across Southeast Asia, and the Pacific would become "a Red Sea." Three years later, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, predicted that Japan would lose faith in America's "resolution and trustworthiness" if the United States lost in Vietnam.(49) Defense Secretary McNamara shared these views. A year later he told a cabinet meeting that if the United States lost Vietnam "the ripple effect would be great - Japan, India. We would have to give up some bases."(50) Other intelligence estimates were more inclined to emphasize the interests that held the United States - Japan alliance together. In 1964, the National Board of Estimates ventured that if the South Vietnam fell, domestic pressure in Japan against the alliance would increase. Nevertheless, the board did "not believe that there would be major changes in Japanese policy."(51)In 1965, Under Secretary of State George Ball, President Johnson's favorite dove, went so far as to say that Japan would welcome a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. Ball declared that "Japan, an ally, would prefer wisdom to valor in a area remote from its own interests...."(52)
In late 1964, the emergence of a government led by Sato Eisaku further soothed American concerns over the direction of Japanese policy. Sato publicly supported American intervention in Vietnam and secured a treaty with the Republic of Korea which, although it did not recognize the South Korean regime as the only legitimate government on the peninsula, brought Japanese policy more closely in line with Washington's.(53) Following the rise of Sato, the Japanese proponents of a rapprochement with the PRC fell out among themselves, leaving the field clear for what John Welfield terms the "pro-American" elements within the Liberal Democratic Party. As Welfield shrewdly notes, the stepped-up criticisms from Washington during this period were probably an attempt to take advantage of this momentary opportunity. By 1967, the Central Intelligence Agency was predicting that an "unfavorable outcome" in Vietnam would not alter America's security relationship with Japan. Instead, concern over China's nuclear threat would assure Japan's fidelity to the alliance for some time to come.(54) Further investigation is needed, but available internal evidence suggests that although American officials continued to desire greater Japanese support for containment in Southeast Asia they felt increasingly certain that whatever the outcome in Vietnam, Japan would remain in the American camp.
The alliance had not produced a convergence of views on Japanese rearmament, China policy, or the place of military containment in Southeast Asia, but Tokyo appeared willing to tolerate what it perceived as Washington's excesses and preserve the security treaty.(55) For those who remembered the original circumstances in which the alliance was forged, or for those rare officials who took even a longer view and placed the alliance in the context of American-Japanese relations, the degree of cooperation achieved over the last two decades counted for much. For those who took a traditional balance of power approach to world affairs, however, the alliance appeared to count for little when weighed against the opportunities for a realignment of the great powers.(56)
(1). Quoted in Walter LaFeber, "Decline of Relations During the Vietnam War," in Akira Iriye and Warren I. Cohen eds., The United States and Japan in the Postwar World (Lexington, 1989), 108.
(2). For examples see The United States and Japan (Proceedings of the Fourteenth Air Force Academy Assembly (United States Air Force Academy,1972); Henry Rosovsky, ed. Discord in the Pacific: Challenges to the Japanese-American Alliance (Washington, D.C. 1972); Fred Greene, Stresses in U.S.-Japanese Security Relations (Washington, D.C., 1975); Michael H. Armacost, Friends or Rivals? The Insider's Account of U.S.-Japan Relations (New York, 19996).
(3) Roger Buckley established fairly strict criteria for evaluating alliances and found the American-Japanese pact wanting in Buckley, US-Japan Alliance Diplomacy, 1945-1990 (Cambridge, 1992). For a critique see Michael A. Barnhart's review essay "The Incomplete Alliance: America and Japan after World War II," Diplomatic History 17:4 (Fall 1993) 615-620.
(4) Charles Neu, The Troubled Encounter: The United States and Japan (New York, 1975).
(5) The same might be said of Japan in the prewar era. Michael Barnhart, "Driven by Domestics: American Relations with Japan and Korea, 1900-1945," in Warren I. Cohen, ed. Pacific Passage: The Study of American-East Asian Relations on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century (New York, 1996), 190-212.
(6) There are some grounds for comparing American and british policies towards Japan in this period. William Howard Taft, Roosevelt's secretary of war, told the Japanese prime minister that the United States welcomed the Anglo-Japanese alliance and that American cooperation could be counted on as if the United States were under treaty obligations. The president strongly supported Taft's interpretation of his policy. Raymond Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan (Seattle, 1966), 102-104.
(7) Akira Iriye, "The United States and Japan in Asia: A Historical Perspective," in Gerald L. Curtis, ed. The United States, Japan, and Asia (New York, 1994), 29-52.
(8) Waldo H. Heinrichs, Jr. American Ambassador: Joseph C. Grew and the Development of the United States Diplomatic Tradition (New York, 1966), 223, 268-269, 286-287.
(9) The quotation is from Waldo Heinrichs, "Summer 1941: The Rush to War," in Heinrichs, Diplomacy and Force: Essays on America's Road to War, 1931-1941 (Chicago, 1997), 217.
(10) Cooke told King that he had not discussed the Russian question in planning papers because "there are so many political aspects it seems better for them not to be included in a Joint Chiefs of Staff paper...." In the memorandum Cooke recommended that the U.S. conduct operations in the Tsushima area in September so as to attain strategic dominance in the war against Japan and be in a position to aid China. Cooke to King, 4 April 1945, Military Operations and Planning, May 22-March 1945, Box 22, Charles C. Cooke Papers, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford, California. (Hereafter cited as Cooke Papers).
(11) Cooke, "We Planned It That Way," 23, Command File, World War II, Operational Archives, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.
(12) Stimson argued against using atomic weapons against Kyoto because destruction of the city might prevent "what our policy demanded, namely a sympathetic Japan to the United States in case there should be any aggression by Russia in Manchuria." Stimson Diary, 24 July 1945, Henry Lewis Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (microfilm); Waldo H. Heinrichs, Jr., American Ambassador: Joseph Grew and the Making of the American Diplomatic Tradition (Boston, 1966), 374.
(13) Japanese leaders shared this fear. John Dower, Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays (New York, 1993), 220.
(14) Admiral William D. Leahy, the president's representative on the Joint Chiefs of Staff saw "no compelling reason" for a large American force to participate in the occupation. Leahy, Comment on JCS 1398/1, 6 July 1945, CCS 383.21 Japan (3-13-45) Sec 2, RG 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Modern Military Branch, National Archives, College Park, Maryland.
(15) Marc Gallicchio, The Cold War Begins in Asia: American East Asian Policy and the Fall of the Japanese Empire (New York, 1988).
(16) Gallicchio, Cold War.
(17) Outline of Measures to be taken toward China Immediately after the Establishment of Peace, 21 August 1945, SRS-1769, MAGIC Diplomatic Summaries, Modern Military Branch.
(18) Akira Iriye, in Warren I. Cohen and Akira Iriye, eds. Postwar
(19) Roger Dingman, "Strategic Planning and the Policy Process: American Plans for War in East, 1945-1950," Naval War College Review ((November-December 1979), 32:6, 4-21; Dingman, "American Policy and Strategy in East Asia, 1898-1950: The making of A Commitment," in Joe C. Dixon, ed. The American Military and the Far East (Washington, D.C., 1980), 34-37; Lester J. Faltos, "The New Pacific Barrier: America's Search for Security in the Pacific, 1945-1947" Diplomatic History (Summer 1989) 13:3, 317-342.
(20) The shifting attitudes among elites and the general public concerning peace and security are discussed in Akira Iriye, "War, Peace, and U.S.-Japanese Relations," in Iriye and Cohen, eds. The United States and Japan in the Postwar World (Lexington, 1989), 191-207; and Wesley T. Wooley, Alternatives to Anarchy: American Supranationalism Since World War II (Bloomington, 1988).
(21) Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (New York, 1985); Howard Schonberger, Aftermath of War: Americans and the Remaking of Japan, 1945-1952 (Kent, OH, 1989).
(22) This interpretation of U.S. strategy is based on Dingman, "Strategic Planning," idem, "Reconsiderations: The United States-Japan Security Treaty, Pacific Community (July 1976), 7:4, 471-493; Michael A. Palmer, Origins of the Maritime Strategy: American Strategy in the Fist Postwar Decade (Washington, D.C., 1988), 22-29, and Marc Gallicchio "The Kuriles Controversy: U.S. Diplomacy in the Soviet-Japan Border Dispute, 1941-1956," Pacific Historical Review (February 1991), 60:1; 88-89.
(23) In the midst of the war, the Truman administration announced that it was dispatching an additional four divisions to Europe, bringing the total to six.
(24) Ibid., 454.
(25) Memorandum from Hoover to Dulles, 19 July 1955,U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955-1957, xxiii, Part 1, Japan Washington, D.C., 1991), 75-76. (hereafter cited as FRUS and volume). Commander-in-Chief Far East to JCS, 18 January 1957, CCS 092 Japan (12-12-50), sec. 22, RG 218, Geographic File, NA.
(26) H.W. Brands, Jr., "The United States and the Reemergence of Independent Japan," Pacific Affairs (Fall 1986), 59:3, 396.
(27) Study of Attack Carrier Force levels , October 1953, A-4, box 286, 1953, OP-30S, Strategic Plans Division, NHC.
(28) Marc Gallicchio, "The Best Defense is a Good Offense: The Evolution of American Strategy in East Asia, 1953-1960," in Warren I. Cohen and Akira Iriye, eds. The Great Powers in East Asia, 1953-1960 (New York, 1990), 70-72.
(29) Memorandum of Conversation, 30 August 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, 23:1, 103.
(30) Memorandum of Conference with the President, 18 June 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene Kansas.
(31) Richard L. Sneider, "U.S. - Japanese Security Relations: A Historical Perspective," (Occasional Papers of the East Asian Research Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, 1982), 25.
(32) Franz Schurman, The Logic of World Power (New York, 1974); 291-293; Edward J. Marolda, "The Influence of Burke's Boys on Limited War," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (August 1981), 57; Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (New York, 1996), 75-79.
(33) Of course, as Akira Iriye has noted, neither the Japanese nor the Americans had completely abandoned their previous approaches to nationalism in China and Southeast Asia. During the war, American support for Chinese nationalism did not extend to the CCP. Similarly, even at its height American anti-colonialism was tempered by a concern for the needs of its wartime allies. By the same token, Japan's posturing as the self-proclaimed champion of Asian liberation won only limited support from the regions nationalists. Not surprisingly, following the war most of the region's nationalists regarded Japanese development schemes as a self-interested attempt to recapture through trade what Tokyo failed to hold by force. Of course none of this kept the Japanese from lecturing the Americans on the need to be more accommodating towards Asian nationalism.
(34) John W. Dower, "The Superdomino in Postwar Asia: Japan in and Out of the Pentagon Papers," Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel edition, 5, 101-142.
(35) For a discussion of this literature see Marc Gallicchio, "Recovery Through Dependency: American-Japanese Relations, 1945-1970," in Warren I. Cohen, ed. Pacific Passage (New York, 1996), 247-278.
(36) Nick Cullather, Illusions of Influence: The Political Economy of United States-Philippines Relations, 1942-1960 (Stanford, 1994); idem, "`Fuel for the Good Dragon:'" The United States and Industrial Policy in Taiwan, 1950-1965," Diplomatic History (Winter 1996), 20:1, 1-26.
(37) Richard B. Finn, Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan (Berkeley, 1992), 225-226.
(38) Kennan memorandum for Dean Rusk, Position of U.S. with Regard to Asia (NSC 48), nd., Chronological Files, Papers of Policy Planning Staff, 1947-1953, RG 59, Diplomatic records, NA.
(39) Acheson testimony, 10 january 1950, Reviews of the World Situation, Hearings held in Executive Session, Committee on Foreign Relations, Eighty-First Congress, First and Second Sessions on the World Situation (Historical Series).
(40) Warren I Cohen, "China in Japanese-American Relations," in Cohen and Iriye, eds. The United States and Japan, 42.
(41) Ibid., 45-52.
(42) Dower emphasizes the first half of the speech in "Superdomino," 108-109.
(43) Tadashi Aruga, "Security Treaty Revision," in Cohen and Iriye, eds. The United States and Japan, 76; Roger Buckley, U.S. - Japan Alliance Diplomacy 1845-1990 (Cambridge, 1992(, 157-158.
(44) Welfield, Empire in Eclipse, 150.
(45) Douglas MacArthur, II to Department of State, 16 December 1960, FRUS:1958-1960, 18:413-423.
(46) Gallicchio, "Best Defense," 79-80; Ronald Spector, Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941-1960 (Washington, D.C., 1983), 359.
(47) Quoted in Welfield, 223.
(48) Michael Schaller, "Altered States: The United States and Japan During the 1960s," Diane B. Kunz, ed. The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations During the 1960s (New York, 1994), 264-265; According to Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, Rusk was more interested in Okinawa's military value than McNamara. Sarantakes, "Continuity through Change: The Return of Okinawa and Iwo Jima, 1967-1972" Journal of American-East Asian Relations (Spring 1994) 3:1, 41-42.
(49) Schaller, "Altered States," 274-275.
(50) Minutes of Cabinet Meeting, 22 July 1965, David M. Barrett, ed., Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam Papers: A Documentary Collection (College Station, Texas, 1997), 239.
(51) Sherman Kent to John McCone, 9 June 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968:1, 486.
(52) That Ball, an economic expert in the administration could label Vietnam and area "remote from [Japan's] interests" indicates how far the Great Crescent strategy had receded from official thinking. "A Compromise Solution for South Viet-nam" n.d., Ibid., 3, 110.
(53). Welfield, Empire in Eclipse, 208-210.
(54) Richard Helms to the President, 12 September 1967, Barrett, ed., Johnson's Papers, 473.
(55) The cavalier manner in which President Richard Nixon pursued his rapprochement with the PRC dramatically highlighted a persistent difference in how the two allies thought of China. Once they recovered from the humiliation of Nixon's surprise announcement, officials in Tokyo could console themselves that Washington had finally seen the folly of its non-recognition policy. In reality, however, the two allies remained widely separated over China. For the Americans China remained a distant abstraction, a makeweight in the great game of power politics.
(56) John Dower sees this as a major flaw of Yoshida's policy of subordinate indepedence. Dower, Japan in War and Peace, 236-238. On Nixon's China policy see the working papers in this series. Michael Schaller, "The Nixon `Shocks' And U.S. - Japan Strategic Relations, 1969-1974," and Nancy Bernkpof Tucker, "U.S. Relations and the Opening to China."