I’m trying to wrap my head around how the USA and Japan shifted from being fierce enemies during World War II to becoming close allies in just a few decades. It seems like a huge turnaround in international relations from an American perspective. What happened and why this dramatic change?
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It also needs to be mentioned that the US and Japan were not traditional enemies.
Yes, the Pacific War was awful, but it was more ‘wrong place, wrong time’ than a desire to exterminate each other after a long history of conflict.
After the conflict, they had no historic reasons to hate so the relationship was much easier to build.
Tangentially related, but, as an American knowing very little of WWII history outside of Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Okinawa, visiting, and inevitably moving to Tokyo has been a trip. It’s amazing to me just how much the Japanese sincerely love Americans. At first it was just conversations I’d have with younger people, but even the much, much older generation you will very often see walking around wearing US military jean jackets with flags and patches and old US warships on them. Economically, something about Japan not needing to spend nearly as much on “defense” as America does is probably a part of why they have such great infrastructure and healthcare.
Necessity. The Japanese were under threat (real or perceived) of communism from Russia and China. In their weekends state, they needed an ally. Further, the US brought economic opportunity as a trading partner.
Sometimes certain types of men get into a fight. The one instigator punches the other guy. That guy hits him back harder a few times.
5 minutes later they’re cool with each other and go for a beer.
If we all acted like the Middle East the world would be a much worse place.
During the occupation and reconstruction of Japan, the US chose to ally with the existing class of elites. They had similar interests: mainly opposing communism, particularly the revolutionary sort of communism that involves peasants killing the elites.
Many of the same social class of people who were in charge of Japan before the war were in charge (or assisting American authorities) after the war. This meant that the US occupation had local allies who already held many of the powers of the government. There was no need to build a state from scratch.
For the Japanese authorities, their primary objective was maintaining the existing social order and avoiding any sort of Bolshevik style revolution that would see the Emperor killed, the country’s elites exterminated, and every symbol of Japanese culture destroyed and replaced by a cult of Marx- and alliance with the Americans was the most effective means to avert such a catastrophe for Japan’s ruling elite.
Both parties viewed rebuilding the Japanese economy and restoring the food supply as critical to keeping communism and revolution at bay. This shared goal meant that American and Japanese authorities worked together towards a common goal.
Disagreements did exist in some cases, but for their part the Japanese elites figured they could cooperate fully while the occupation was ongoing and just wait for the Americans to leave and then make any changes to their society afterwards- only to find out that many Japanese had become accustomed to new postwar way of life, and a return to the old ways wasn’t as easy as they had believed.
A lot of these answers are from the American perspective, but from Japan’s perspective, after suffering from war and constant bombing for so long, everyone is really just tired of the shit.
When America came to provide help, massive amount of it and literally rebuilt the nation, they saw it as an apology and amazing reparations from US for the war, and that there are good time ahead. Also helps that the most hardcore dissenters probably died already.
When you destroy something but dont help rebuild it into something better you get perpetual war like in the middle east.
A history teacher I had basically said MacArthur read The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, and then things turned out ok.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chrysanthemum_and_the_Sword
You utterly destroy one countries divine belief that they are superior by nuking not 1 but 2 cities for kicks. I mean we humbled the shit out of them and since that bore a long lasting alliance its been goochie from there.
US forced unconditional surrender, re-wrote their entire constitution, re-created their government as a copy of US style democracy, and installed their pro-American politicians into power with help with CIA. US also stationed US bases and troops.
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