Eight decades since the end of the Second World War, the US-Japan alliance continues to evolve beyond its Cold War foundations.
On September 2, 1945, on the deck of USS Missouri, Imperial Japan surrendered to Allied forces, marking the end of the Pacific conflict that had started in 1931. The gaunt cheeks of US Army General Jonathan Wainwright, who had surrendered his forces to the Japanese in the Philippines in 1942 and endured three years of captivity, bore witness to the vicious and primal conflict that the historian John Dower described as a “war without mercy.”
Looking to the future, Supreme Allied Commander General Douglas MacArthur addressed the ceremony: “It is my earnest hope…that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood of carnage of the past…a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish—for freedom, tolerance, and justice.” As Japan lay in ruin after two nuclear attacks and countless firebombs, one wonders how much faith the stiff, morning-suited Japanese delegation had in MacArthur’s words.
In the eighty years since that day, the United States and Japan have lived up to MacArthur’s hopes. From victor and vanquished in 1945, the two countries have become military allies, economic competitors, teachers to each other, and finally, global partners in an uncertain world. None of this was preordained. Rather, their deeply entwined diplomatic, military, economic, and cultural histories of the past eight decades forged what former Ambassador Mike Mansfield has lauded as “the most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none.”
Post-War Reparations, Reforms, and Recovery
After a vicious war that devastated much of Asia, numerous American leaders were eager to ensure that Japan would never again undertake aggression. Some American officials called for reparations. President Truman appointed a commission that would designate and ship portions of Japan’s industry to formerly occupied Asian territories as reparations.
Others, such as General MacArthur and his Allied occupation staff, attributed the war to Imperial Japan’s “feudalist” political structure. Though they retained Emperor Hirohito as a point of Japanese national unity, occupation officials sought to remake Japanese life completely by giving women the vote, undertaking land reform, and permitting labor unions. Most significantly, the occupation shaped and supervised the new Japanese constitution, which included the now-renowned Article 9, which renounced “war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.”
Growing Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union and the Korean War in 1950 would shift American priorities for Japan. Rather than comprehensive reparations or reform, American officials in Tokyo and Washington sought to make Japan the political and economic hub of anti-communism in Asia. Doing so entailed developing Japanese military and economic strength. As early as 1948, the US encouraged Japan to repeal Article 9. Though that effort failed, the two countries became treaty allies in 1952, and Japan created the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) in 1954. To rebuild Japan’s economy, the United States facilitated Japan’s return to the international economic community by sponsoring its 1955 entry to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
Japanese Economic-Cultural Engagement with the United States
Japanese government and business officials embraced this new Cold War paradigm of allying with the United States and rebuilding the Japanese economy. This became known as the “Yoshida Doctrine,” named after Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida (1948–1954), which his successors continued in various ways through the end of the Cold War. Post-war economic recovery unexpectedly fostered business, cultural, and person-to-person relations that enriched the bilateral relationship.
During the 1950s, Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) worked with industry to rebuild the Japanese economy. Through MITI’s control of the Development Bank of Japan, it directed capital towards foundational heavy industries, including steel, electric power, and coal. These industries subsequently provided the materials and energy needed by higher-value sectors, such as automobiles, electronics, and shipbuilding, which were then exported in exchange for US dollars and other foreign currencies that Japan needed to pay for its imports of oil, coal, and iron ore.
Dependence on overseas markets meant that industrial production alone was insufficient to ensure Japan’s post-war economic recovery; export goods also had to be appealing. This was a challenge, as Japanese goods during the prewar and immediate post-war periods usually consisted of inexpensive and poorly made items, such as Christmas lights and paper umbrellas for tiki drinks.
In response, the Japanese government and business, with support from Washington, pursued initiatives in the 1950s to improve the quality of Japanese goods. Between 1955 and 1961, the Japan Productivity Center dispatched 3,987 observers to study American industrial business techniques. The Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers, motivated by American industrial engineer W Edwards Deming, pioneered quality control techniques.
Similar efforts were also underway at Toyota, where Taiichi Ohno experimented with processes that would later become known as “just-in-time production.” The quasi-governmental Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) established offices across the United States to promote Japanese exports as technologically sophisticated and of high quality. These collective efforts achieved results: a JETRO survey from the 1968 Ohio State Fair reported that Japanese goods had lost their earlier reputation for low quality.
Japanese businesses also realized that their goods had to adapt to the tastes and needs of the US market. Much of this was done through trial and error. Toyota and Nissan both made forays into California in the late 1950s, only to discover that their cars were too slow and insufficiently durable for American highways. In other cases, the Japanese and Americans developed effective partnerships.
Honda’s success in the 1970s owed a great deal to the practical, anti-consumerist tone of its advertising firm, Needham Harper. Professional photographers favored Nikon cameras because the company solicited and incorporated technical input from camera dealers and photojournalists. Over time, these successes meant that Japanese goods became fixtures in everyday American life and culture, as exemplified by Marty McFly’s Toyota pickup truck in the film Back to the Future (1985).