The following is a summary of Ann Waswo's seminar presentation on "The Pacific
War in the Public Memory of America" at the Institute of Social Science, 26
September, 1995.

This is a summary of some of the main points I raised in my recent seminar
presentation at Shaken, which was itself based on a paper I gave in August at
Keio University in a seminar on "What Was the Pacific War?". My observations are
not based on research in the archives, but on my personal experiences in growing
up in southern California in the early postwar years and in teaching general
courses in modern Japanese history since the mid-1960s.

By "public memory" I mean the attitudes and views of the majority of ordinary
members of the public, what is "taken for granted" as true about the past. So
far as the American public memory of the Pacific War is concerned, I think four
major elements can be identified: 1) Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on 7
December 1941, a day of infamy never to be forgotten, which brought a peaceful
and peace-loving America into the Second World War; 2) American military might
as the decisive factor in the Allied victory over Germany and as virtually the
only factor in victory over Japan; 3) the necessity of the atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after Japan's leaders had refused to accept the terms of
the Potsdam Declaration, in order to bring about a Japanese surrender; and 4)
the generous treatment afforded Japan by America during the Occupation, despite
Japan's war guilt and the many atrocities committed by the Japanese during the
war, for which far too few Japanese appear sufficiently grateful today.

Of all the elements, the one that seems the most problematic to me is the third,
the assumption that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused the
Japanese to surrender. I think a case can be made that the entry of the Soviet
Union into the war against Japan, on 9 August, almost precisely to the day after
the end of the war in Europe it had promised to do so at Yalta, was at least as,
and probably more, important. Granted, Hiroshima was the site of the 2nd General
Headquarters of Imperial Japanese Forces, and many soldiers lost their lives in
the atomic bombings. This probably counted for more with the High Command in
Tokyo than did the loss of many civilian lives. But Japan still had well over
one million soldiers on the Asian continent, in Korea, Manchukuo and China. The
Army High Command was counting on them, as well as on women and children armed
with bamboo spears, for defense of the home islands, and others in the cabinet
and imperial court had been counting on Soviet mediation to bring about a more
favorable, negotiated settlement of the war. When the Soviets declared war, the
resistance to acceptance by the Japanese government of the terms of the Potsdam
Declaration was seriously, probably decisively, undermined.

The American public memory of the war was constructed during and immediately
after the war itself, and it has survived, virtually intact and remarkably
unaffected by professional scholarship on the subject, for some 50 years. I
think the most important reason for the longevity of this memory was the cold
war and its effects on public opinion and the mood of postwar America. During
the McCarthy era of the 1950s, the voices of dissent, even of reflection were
stilled. The armed forces mounted sustained public relations campaigns to win
public and congressional support for their new, anti-communist mission. War
movies, some of them given considerable technical assistance by the armed
forces, almost diplaced the western as a celebration of "American" values and
"Americanism". Although some World War II films eventually began to deal with
the complexities of the war in Europe and with the "good German soldier", no
change occurred [or has yet occurred] in portrayals of the war against Japan or
of the Japanese soldier. The war film industry of this era and its effects on
public opinion would make a fine dissertation topic for some young movie buff.
Personally, I've found that an appreciation of the militarization of American
politics and society during the 1950s has helped me to understand developments
in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s.

From the mid 1960s onward, young Americans in particular began to question the
cold war rhetoric of their elders, owing in no small measure to television
coverage of the war in Vietnam [and to films such as Dr Stangelove and MASH].
But the war against Japan [and Germany] was still widely regarded as a special
case - the "last good war". The older the American, the stronger the regard.
Here lies the basic explanation, in my opinion, for opposition from veterans
organizations to the Smithsonian Exhibit, as originally planned. To include not
only the Enola Gay but also what happened on the ground in Hiroshima was to
tamper with the pure, heroic image of "their" war. It was to associate them, the
survivors, and those who had fallen with less glorious, more controversial
conflicts, most particularly with the war in Vietnam.

In the United States, despite but also because of controversy over the
Smithsonian Exhibit and other events in connection with the 50th anniversary of
the ending of the war, there has been unprecedented attention in the mass media
to some of the basic elements in the public memory of that conflict - most
especially, to how the war ended. In America the veil has been lifted; a glimpse
of what happened, to real people, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has been provided.
Will this result in any change in the public memory of the war? Will the
comparable commemorations in Japan lead to greater public attention to Japan's
own imperialism and aggression? If so, the Pacific War may finally become
"history" - not to be forgotten, but finally to be grappled with in all its
complexity and moral ambiguity. I do not think this will happen quickly or
painlessly in either country - too many people and too many institutions still
have too great a stake in custody of the wartime past "as it should be
remembered". But with the ending of the Cold War, surely the chances for changed
assessments are greater than ever before. At the very least, it should be
possible at long last to gain access to all the documents relating to the final
days of the Pacific War - especially those still under wraps in Washington,
Tokyo and Moscow relating to the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against
Japan.

[Moderator's Note: Ann Waswo is University Lecturer in Modern Japanese History
at the University of Oxford and is currently Visiting Professor at the Institute
of Social Science, University of Tokyo. Debate on the above points is more than
welcome, but please avoid posting flames.]