Unequal Allies?: United States Security and Alliance Policy Toward Japan, 1945-1960 (review)

During the last 15 years, several important studies of U.S. policy toward occupied and postoccupation Japan have enriched our understanding of what has been called the "Pacific Alliance." Authors as diverse as John Dower, Herbert Bix, Chalmers Johnson, Richard Finn, Howard Schonberger, William Borden, Sayuri Shimizu, Aaron Fosberg, Walter LaFeber, Takemae Eiji, and Michael Schaller have utilized a growing body of U.S. and British government records and largely nonofficial Japanese sources to construct rich histories of the occupation experience and the strategic alliance that followed in the wake of Japan's defeat and recovery. Although many of these authors stress different aspects of the convoluted, bilateral relationship, nearly all present a complex picture of patron-client state relations that included tensions and frayed sensibilities. While Japan was clearly far more than a subaltern state, these recent accounts generally stress the limited scope of its sovereignty, certainly through the 1970s.

John Swenson-Wright, a professor at the University of Cambridge's Faculty of Oriental Studies, describes himself as a mild revisionist determined to reinterpret the relationship between Japanese and American professional diplomats in the decade and a half that followed Japan's wartime surrender. In spite of the gruesome legacies of war and defeat, postwar social upheaval, and a merciless cold war, Swenson-Wright argues that Japanese and American policymakers achieved a remarkable degree of amity in pursuit and achievement of a workable alliance. Utilizing mostly well-known English-language primary and secondary sources, as well as a rich memoir literature in Japanese that has not been well known among Western scholars, Swenson-Wright makes a strong case in taking issue with historians who have portrayed the bilateral security relationship from 1945 to 1960 as a case of an overbearing superpower bullying a timid client. Rather, he concludes, pragmatic and sensitive officials in both countries forged an alliance that served the two sides rather well and contributed to regional stability and prosperity.

In this account, key American policymakers, from Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower down through Dean Rusk, George Kennan, John Foster Dulles, John Allison, and Douglas MacArthur II were neither narrow, culture-bound "ugly Americans" nor robotic followers of real politik determined to squeeze Japan for America's strategic benefit. Rather, they labored consistently and effectively to forge an active alliance based on common interests. Japan's reluctance to fully embrace America's more militarily robust alliance expectations, Swenson-Wright asserts, was gradually understood and accommodated by its senior partner across the Pacific.

In short, the author maintains, in most cases of alliance conflict, such as the drafting of the 1951 peace and security treaties, the terms of trade and aid during the 1950s, the crisis over nuclear testing in the Pacific, and the revisions of the security pact in 1959–60, American officials made genuine efforts to accommodate Japanese sensibilities. For reasons largely of domestic politics, some Japanese diplomats and politicians engaged in public anti-American posturing. But, in private, even many of these individuals recognized Washington's benign intentions.

Most of the author's points are well documented, well argued, and on target, even if they are not quite as "revisionist" as he asserts. However, his focus mostly on formal alliance security issues sometimes results in glossing over important aspects of the Japanese-American relationship. For example, it is difficult to describe bilateral security concerns as completely amicable when one views the widespread Japanese anger at the behavior of American soldiers (especially toward women) during the 1950s, the national angst exhibited during the Lucky Dragon nuclear fallout incident in 1954 followed by the grassroots antinuclear movement, and the massive demonstrations provoked by the efforts to revise and renew the security treaty in 1959–60. While Japan's diplomatic and political elites might have been comfortable with the bilateral security relationship with Washington, the feelings were hardly universal...