I am going to focuse on the relations between the United States and the Japanese after W.W.I and Pearl Harbor. There were a few incidents out of this book that I felt were very interesting that helped contribute to the United States and Japanese mistrusts and miscalculations over the next twent or thirty years until the relations ended up in war after the surprising terriblr=e terrorist bombing of Pearl Harbor. Thus, causing the start of World War II.
The first incident that I wanted to discuss out of this book took place in 1922. In 1922 the big powers (which were all European except the United States and Japan from a treaty at a Washington Conference.) In this conference the powers agreed to form a multilateralist state of existence with each other and the world. In this conference the powers agreed to form a sort of peaceful coexistence and disarmament between themselves and the world. What was misunderstood by the major powers was that they believed that peace and disarmament was wanted by all the members of the conference which was not the case what so ever. The powers believed that they would form a national community that shared the same interest by all the majorly diverse nations.
When itbecame known that the highly diverse countries did not have the same interst there was not a national law committee (like today; NATO) to uphold the laws that were made by the Washington Committee so the idea of this multilateralist state was dropped and animosity continued for years at a time until things became out of hand and hate ran rapid.
The second incident that I want to discuss is the Manchurian Incident of September 1931. The United States was deep in an economic crisis and committed to staying isolated from the other countries in Europe because the US feared another war could happen. Even if the United States would have not been isolated they lacked the power to influence other countries around the world. This conflict happened because the Japanese faced a lot of problems on the world scene and domestic problems caused the Japanese to go from a multilateralist state of being (like they agreed to do after W.W.
I) to seeking an autonomous state of being in their foreign policy. In this autonomous state the Japanese wanted to form a stron military and political influence over Asia for themselves rather than the West.
I believe that these two events contributed to growing animosity between the United States and the Japanese. I think the reason that the Japanese went through with their terrible act of terrorism was because the Japanese wanted to show how strong they really were not only to the United States but to the rest major powers that were underestimating the Japanese. I also believe that the Japanese had a strong military and air squadron but I feel that the Japanese could have got the United States in a more logical and moral way instead of using such cowardly way like bombing the US fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Robert Scalpino, American-Japanese Relations In a Changing Era. (The LIbrary Press, New York; 1972) .
