Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, China and Japan, Volume XIV, Part 2

611.94/9–353

No. 682
The Ambassador in Japan (Allison) to the Department of State¹

secret
eyes only for the secretary
No. 460

Tokyo, September 3, 1953.

Ref:

• Department’s Circular Telegram No. 113, August 28, 1953.²

Subject:

• American Leadership and Japan.

1. Three facts are basic to any consideration of the present state of Japanese confidence in American purpose and leadership.

a. First, the moderate conservatives who have governed Japan since 1946 and who are almost certain to continue to hold power here for the workable future welcomed the new Administration with a faith that was perhaps unmatched within the Free World. In few countries were the dominating forces so anxious for a change in the directions of American policy. Many of them regarded the Communist capture of China as the central fact of the mid-Century and could discern in the older American policy no theory of events capable of dealing with the magnitude of this revolution. And despite certain misgivings about the isolationist and belligerent fringes of the Republican Party, they felt the greater Republican interest in the Far East augured a more balanced world strategy and greater promise of an early end to the Korean War. At home, they had been appalled by the Occupation’s legalization of the Japanese Communist Party; by its encouragement of leftist elements in labor and politics; by its successive Purges which sapped conservative sources of strength; by what they regarded as overzealous experimentation in social reform; by the thoroughness with which the traditional political and economic tendons of Japanese society were severed. They were grateful for the leniency and generosity of the Occupation, for American insistence on exclusivity of Occupation command, and for the American conceptions which underlay the Treaty of Peace. But, the Japanese people, by the fall of 1952, agreed that it was time for a change in the United States.

b. The second basic fact is the tremendous post-war dependence by Japan on the United States in a relationship all the more remarkable since it developed without a basic tradition of association to cushion the rubs and rasps of close cooperation. To a degree not generally appreciated in the United States, Japan has put its eggs in the American basket. Their pathological fear of war and their obsessive preoccupation with the blunt problem of how Japan is to live makes every American action, or lack of action the object of immediate attention and minute scrutiny.

c. The third basic fact is the almost complete reversal we have been compelled to make in our prescriptions for Japanese policy since the end of the war. Few Americans are conscious of the extent of the change, but all Japanese know of the MacArthurian planning which dissolved their military, destroyed their munitions industry, sponsored their Peace Constitution, and instilled neutralism and pacifism as models for their conduct. Today our planning and their security rests on their abandonment of our earlier preachments. This has left many Japanese with the feeling that the arcs of our policy fluctuate too widely, that our responsibility for their defense rests not only on treaty arrangements but on the miscalculations of our earlier formula, and that we ourselves created most of our own current difficulties in Japan.

2. Thus, the Japanese received the new Administration with great enthusiasm and very considerable confidence, and there has been in Japan a lesser diminution of faith in our leadership than has been reported from other countries.

3. This does not mean that confusion and misinterpretations do not exist or that there has not been an impairment of the hopes that existed last January. The contrary is true; if it is of lesser degree in Japan than elsewhere nevertheless it is serious enough to give us concern. It is my judgment, however, that the doubts and misgivings do not yet affect the person of the President, the respect in which he as an individual is held, or the central purposes of his Administration.

4. If, for Japan, I were to isolate a single cause for the uneasiness and anxiety we sense here I would say that it is not our capacity to deal militarily with our enemies that is being called into question but our ability to treat with our friends and allies, at home and abroad.

5. For the Far East, there is no doubt of the Administration’s desire for peace, but the Japanese are increasingly questioning our ability and determination to control our Asian allies. There is little confidence of either a peaceful retirement or a peaceful victory by Dr. Rhee. They regard the Chinese Nationalist Government aloofly and Chiang himself as a man who has lost both country and future. What they fear most however is that the United States may have ceded to both Dr. Rhee and the Generalissimo the power seriously to embarrass objectives or even to involve, by unilateral actions, the United States in war. If war should be forced on the United States in Asia, the Japanese know that so inextricably are they bound to us that they could not escape involvement.

6. In the United States they sense there may be the same indulgence of Administration allies. They fear a reversion to economic protectionism, or a failure to take those measures which will forestall a recession should there be a Korean settlement and a period of less turbulent peace. They wonder whether our insistence that they maintain China trade controls at a higher level than is enforced by any European nation is not designed more for its effects on the American political situation than on the Korean War. They were alarmed by the decision to postpone for one year trade agreement negotiations and fear that a more liberal trade policy may be sacrificed for the needs of party harmony. If protectionism or recession should befall the American economy, the Japanese know that Japan could not escape its effects.

7. In the United States also, inability to control our domestic allies raises the question in Japanese minds as to who is the Voice of the Administration. When the President or the Secretary speaks, the Japanese sense the authenticity and responsibility of their words, but their statements of policy are by definition infrequent. The press and the radio carry other pronouncements by officials whose status and importance are often not easy for the Japanese to appraise and who are not always answered by members of the President’s team. Often an absence of rebuttal appears to imply a degree of assent. From this standpoint, the phenomenon called “McCarthyism” has had an appallingly adverse effect in Japan, not only because it exists but also because the Administration has seemed to them reluctant to challenge it. The reaction of intellectuals and students who claim to see in “McCarthyism” the repudiation or the hypocrisy of the democratic standards preached during the Occupation is well known. More important, however, is the effect on the permanent civil service here. In Japan government policy and attitudes are made, influenced, and carried by the career bureaucracy, and there has been bewilderment and estrangement over what by them is considered the sacrifice of nonpolitical civil experts to partisan political considerations.

8. There is a further dimension to the problem of Japanese confidence in American leadership. This involves the deep-rooted hope that a new examination of Japan’s place and needs would be made by the new Administration. In the foreign field, this would mean a recognition of Japan’s place in any Far Eastern settlements, more equal and more open exchanges on the problems of mutual concern, closer cooperation in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The Japanese are not unaware that for Europe we have developed a network of close relationships with the British and the French, and even with the Germans, that involve continuous consultations, integrated planning, and joint civil and military staffs. They hoped that the Administration would desire something of the sort for Japan. Inside Japan, they expected that a newer American approach would mean a reappraisal of the needs of the Security Forces, a tailoring of those needs to Japanese availabilities in land and facilities, a tempering of short-run military desirables to the longer aspects of an enduring United States–Japan relationship. These hopes have not yet been realized.

9. Most of the factors which this analysis prompts me to suggest as useful for American policy in the months ahead seem to me of general applicability. All of them will have salutary effect in Japan.

10. Most important, I think, is the continuous affirmation of American purpose and constancy and strength and quiet confidence, such as the President made in his April 16 speech.³ Only the President can project these qualities as the image of America.

11. The basic theme we should exploit and with which we should be inseparably identified is the prevention of war, not the winning of war. A policy to deter war, inspired by American leadership and enlisting the best efforts of the Free World, might well prove the best policy for preparedness for war if preventive attempts should fail.

12. Within this theme we should strive for crisper definitions of positive goals for Free World endeavor. Containment and anti-Communism are not enough. Rearmament should never appear as an end in itself.

13. In the Far East generally, we must recognize the telescoped evolution our policies have had to follow. We are concentrating here on Military assistance programs, and the emphasis is correct in view of the immediacy of the military threat. We have nonetheless foregone the benefits of preparatory stages of economic and political arrangements, such as OEEC, EPU, the Brussels Pact, NATO, and the several arms of the European Community. There, moreover our efforts were assisted by European leaders who moved within a European context and were capable of developing their self-help potentials. In the Far East, there have been no such leaders since the war. The area has become tightly compartmentalized. And our own assistance programs have been unrelated, too exclusively national, and too largely particularized in terms of separate problems or specific emergencies: a wheat grant here, a development loan there, a Point IV program in a third country, and special procurement in a fourth. Over the coming months we should consider whether we can make the attempt in the East that we made in Europe some years ago: a proposal for American aid to supplement the deficiencies of self-help in the development of wider trading areas and multilateral economic and political institutions. The resources we will have available for the task will be smaller but the area’s capacities for absorption of aid are infinitely less and the techniques and practices of modern separatism are not set so deeply. Such a proposal might capture the imagination of the East and break through the log jam which threatens the existence of each of the new states.

14. The most important single problem in the Far East is the problem of China. No acceptable formula has yet been evolved in any interested quarter. Neither the ideas of Peking or of Taipei—or of New Delhi or of London—offer much present promise. Tokyo with visible reluctance followed the American lead in maintaining its relations with the Nationalist Government, although it was originally inclined to the British approach and still basically holds to theories of the durability of the Communist capture of China and of the possibility of facilitating the alienation of Peking from Moscow. Recently the Japanese have seemed increasingly disposed to a theory of “Two Chinas”. There may in the future be something workable in this.

15. For Japan itself, much remains to be done. We should seek the removal of the last of the Occupation residues. We should aim for an inverse ratio of personnel to policy: the number of official Americans, both civil and military, in Japan should decrease while the ties of long-range collaboration and interdependence increase. There have been times since the end of the Occupation when the reverse has seemed to be occurring. We should ask those Americans who remain, or who visit here briefly, to refrain from public tutorials; we will maintain quiet and persistent pressure for our objectives behind the scenes. We should seek to restore our reputation for non-intervention in Japanese domestic affairs. We do not practice party politics abroad, and in Japan where the hold on power of friendly, moderate conservatives is not likely to be broken there should be no exception to our practice. We should seek to develop with Japan closer coordination, franker exchanges, and fuller participation in Far Eastern planning. If we do not arrange for consultation with the Japanese on the basic range of Far Eastern problems, we shall convince them either that we have condemned them to a second-class associate or that we have nothing much to offer in the way of ideas. We should remember that the Japanese have historically responded to a policy of confidence, trust, and equality of treatment; while they have historically revolted against mistrust or the appearance of a Western concert indifferent or disdainful of their interests. A bedrock of confidence in cooperation with the United States and of identification of Japanese policy with the future of the Free World exists today in Japan. We have only to sweep away a rubble of uncertainty.

John M. Allison

1. Drafted by Allison.
2. In this circular telegram the Department inquired concerning foreign opinion of the U.S. Government and its objectives. (611.00/8–2853)
3. “The Chance for Peace”, delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington. For text, see Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1960), pp. 179–188.