After more than five years since the termination of hostilities Japan is still technically at war with 49 countries of Asia, Europe and the Western Hemisphere. That she stands ready and qualified for a settlement is admitted on all hands. It was confirmed by President Truman after his historic mid-Pacific conference with General Douglas MacArthur.
Thanks to the guidance and statesmanship of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, and thanks to the bounteous aid from the American Government and people, Japan has come a long way on the road of recovery and reconstruction. Economically we have reached a point where further progress toward achieving self-support depends on our participation in world commerce as a free and independent nation. Politically, it seems high time that we were permitted to run the government on our own initiative and responsibility. A protracted occupation, no matter how efficient, wise and benevolent, tends to destroy the people’s self-respect and their spirit of self-reliance; it militates against the growth of true democracy in the country. Japan awaits a peace treaty, which is long overdue.
Japan and the Crisis in Asia
by Shigeru Yoshida
Foreign Affairs
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/70857/shigeru-yoshida/japan-and-the-crisis-in-asia
AFTER more than five years since the termination of hostilities Japan is still technically at war with 49 countries of Asia, Europe and the Western Hemisphere. That she stands ready and qualified for a settlement is admitted on all hands. It was confirmed by President Truman after his historic mid-Pacific conference with General Douglas MacArthur.
Thanks to the guidance and statesmanship of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, and thanks to the bounteous aid from the American Government and people, Japan has come a long way on the road of recovery and reconstruction. Economically we have reached a point where further progress toward achieving self-support depends on our participation in world commerce as a free and independent nation. Politically, it seems high time that we were permitted to run the government on our own initiative and responsibility. A protracted occupation, no matter how efficient, wise and benevolent, tends to destroy the people’s self-respect and their spirit of self-reliance; it militates against the growth of true democracy in the country. Japan awaits a peace treaty, which is long overdue.
On our Constitution Day, May 3, 1949, General MacArthur issued a message to the Japanese people, in which he took pains to explain the undue delay of a peace settlement. He stated:
The Allied purposes enunciated at Potsdam in many essential respects have been fulfilled, and you have worked diligently and faithfully to discharge your surrender commitments. . . . That the Allied forces still occupy your native soil is thus by no means due to fault of yours since the inception of the Occupation, but rather to events and circumstances elsewhere beyond your capacity to influence or control.
It is scarcely necessary for me to describe what were those events and circumstances. They may be summarized in a single phrase: the cold war.
It may be recalled that the problem of Japanese peace as an inter-Allied issue was first brought to the fore by General Mac-Arthur, who in 1947, shortly after the Allied Powers had signed their peace treaty with Italy, made public a statement, under the date of March 17, advocating an early conclusion of a Japanese peace treaty and termination of the Allied occupation.
(sk)
こういう寄稿は、かけ引きの道具というか、手段というか、本当のことだけが書かれているとは誰も思わず、歴史的な価値が認められることもない。
でもそんななかにも、多少の事実と、多少の真実が含まれていたりもする。願いとか希望とかを、文章のなかにさらりと流し込むのは、そう容易なことではないだろう。
読んでみて、そして他の文書と比べてみて、吉田茂という政治家のしたことが素晴らしいと言えない自分に気づいた。
その能力には感服する。しかし、現在の日本に民主主義がない理由のひとつが、この政治家がひとりでしてしまったことに依るのだとすれば、そしてその全体主義的な手法のせいだったのだとすれば、その行動は認めることはできない。
吉田茂を評価し、感謝までしている今の日本人たちには、その全体主義的なやり方への批判的な視点を持つことはできないのだろうか。
冷戦に直面したアメリカの揺れが、この特異な政治家を作ってしまったのだというが、実際に作ってしまったのはひとりの政治家ではなく、21世紀になっても全体主義体制を崩さない、この不思議な国家なのではないだろうか。