A Strange Thing to Say in Someone Else's Country

Isn't this a strange thing to say in the Japanese prefecture most dedicated to peace, in a country for which dialogue and win-win negotiations have traditionally triumphed over military bluster?

Japan learned a bitter, bitter lesson about military bluster some 60 years ago, while the American side hasn't seemed to learn a thing from Viet Nam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc. Instead of macho pep talks, maybe it is time for the US side to use the eyes and ears (of which there are two each) instead of the lone and ever-ready mouth.

It seems the US military is very much out of step with what most people in this part of the world are aiming for. When people really want peace, then peace is what they prepare for. Peaceful trade and tourism that includes China and Korea is what Okinawa lives by.

(for the full article, go to The Japan Times online)


Here's what the news says:

U.S. not backing down, Dempsey tells troops at Yokota

AP



Apr 26, 2013


America’s top military officer told U.S. troops based in Japan on Thursday that “the best way to avoid war is to prepare for it.”

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, made the comments at Yokota Air Base amid heightened tensions in the region after repeated threats from North Korea.

In response, the U.S. has deployed an antiballistic missile battery to Guam, while the Japanese government has deployed Aegis-equipped cruisers and land-based missile interceptors around Tokyo.

While there has been a lull in rising hostility between the two Koreas in the past few days, prospects for dialogue dimmed after North Korea demanded the lifting of U.N. sanctions and the end of U.S.-South Korea military drills as conditions for resuming long-suspended talks aimed at defusing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

But Dempsey said the U.S. would continue military exercises with its allies.

“We’ll continue to do whatever exercises we need to do to make sure we have the right command and control, the right skills, the right collaboration, interoperability with our allies in the region in the event that there is a miscalculation,” he told the military personnel during the visit, his first to Japan since assuming his post in 2011.

Something to look forward to ...

John F. Kennedy’s legacy may finally come to Japan

by Robert D. Eldridge

Special To The Japan Times



Apr 5, 2013




CHATAN, OKINAWA PREF. – If Caroline Kennedy, whose name apparently is being floated to succeed John Roos as the next U.S. ambassador to Japan, is nominated and confirmed, she will be completing, in a sense, a journey that was started almost 50 years ago by her father, President John F. Kennedy, and his staff.

JFK, the popular and young president, was tragically assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, in his third year in office during a visit to Dallas, Texas. As a result, he was not able to fulfill some of his plans and goals for the remainder of his first administration, and those of his second, had he been re-elected.

One of the first things on his agenda in 1964, despite its being an election year, was to visit Japan. In fact, on the day of that national tragedy, several members of the Cabinet were already flying over the Pacific on their way to Japan.

Secretary of State D. Dean Rusk and members of the White House staff were to begin coordinating the president’s visit when they reached Japan, but they, too, never made it there. They turned around in midair to attend the funeral and join their compatriots in mourning.

The idea of Kennedy visiting Japan seems to have been in the works for a while. The reasons for doing so were many, particularly after President Dwight D. Eisenhower had to abort his plans to visit Japan because of the Japanese government’s inability to guarantee his safety in the middle of the riots surrounding the ratification of the revised bilateral security treaty.

If JFK had been able to able to visit Japan, he would have been the first sitting U.S. president to do so. Importantly he was also a very popular president in Japan, symbolizing a youthful and vibrant United States full of promise.

Japan at the time was also very much vibrant, too, and optimistic. In the fall of 1964, it was to host the Olympics, symbolizing its return to the international community after World War II. The bullet train and expressways were coming on line, and the nation, now past the divisive security treaty revisions riots of 1960, was now united behind the moderate Hayato Ikeda administration focusing on economic growth.

For Kennedy, who had visited Japan in the fall of 1951 with his brother, Robert, Japan would have looked dramatically different in 1964.

After JFK’s seven-week trip to the “Middle and Far East,” he wrote, “The East of today is not the East of Palmerston and Disraeli and Cromer. Were it so, we might accept Kipling’s dictum that East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. But this we dare not do. We want, we may need, allies in ideas, in resources, even in arms, but if we would have allies, we must first of all gather to ourselves friends.”

Of course, historical “ifs” are not really permitted, but I have always wondered how U.S.-Japan relations might have developed in the 1960s had JFK been able to visit Japan. His brother’s visit as attorney general in February 1962 brought a huge amount of good will and publicity, particularly for his willingness to engage in frank discussions with radical students during a visit to Waseda University. Certainly, the level of good will at the national level and deepening of the personal relationships between the president and prime minister would have been furthered.

Because JFK was not able to visit, nor did his two successors, the two countries had to wait another decade before a sitting president, Gerald R. Ford, came to Japan. During that time, relations became frayed between the two countries over the handling of the Vietnam War, basing issues, Okinawa’s reversion, trade friction and recognition of China, to name a few.

JFK is probably looking down proudly at what his 55-year-old daughter, who is the sole survivor of JFK’s immediate family, has accomplished over the years, particularly in the arts, literary world and education, in addition to foundations and nonprofits. His legacy may guide her in her new assignment in Japan, but her experiences and connections will have to power her through these difficult and less-than-optimistic times.

Robert D. Eldridge, Ph.D., a former tenured associate professor of U.S.-Japan relations at Osaka University, was a recipient of the JFK Presidential Library Research Travel Grant in 2000. He is currently working on a book about the reversion of Okinawa.

Tit for Tat

The US says it doesn't know what to think about the new regime in Japan because it is "untested". Guess what? Japan doesn't know what to think about the ambassador the US gave us, an untested person from the campaign donor class and not a diplomat.

We were expecting Joseph Nye, but that's not who we got.