|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Reviewing the 'Remember Pearl Harbor' Hype
| Article
# : |
20411 |
|
|
Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
|
| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1992 |
2,012 Words |
| Author
: |
Edward Neilan
Edward Neilan is Tokyo bureau chief of the Washington Times. |
TOKYO - For a month before "the day that will in infamy," newspaper articles and television specials in Japan prepared audiences for America's frenzied "Remember Pearl Harbor," observances that were supposed to set off a round of "Japan-bashing," that would perhaps be fatal to U.S.-Japanese relations.
Less than a month later, Japanese newspaper and television stations warned of the impending visit of U.S President Bush, leading a group of American industrialists determined to open Japanese markets and arrest an American slide into deeper recession. Attention was focused on Chrysler's Lee Iacocca, the prodminent "Japan-basher", Iacocca's calls for a "level playing field", and other outspokenness had made his books bigger sellers in Japan than in the United States.
As the world now knows, Japan-U.S relations survived the "Remember Pearl Harbor" fit just as they survived the Bush "get tough" mission and its main supporting star, Iacocca.
Looking back at the Pearl Harbor anniversary, followed closely by the rescheduled and redirected Bush mission it is easy to see whey the Japanese are sometimes perplexed as they attempt to plumb the American psyche.
The Pearl Harbor commemorative phenomenon struck many Americans as well as Japanese and other Asians as overkill.
"Why all the fuss about 'Remember Pearl Harbor'," American businessman Clyde McEvoy asked. "The Japanese attacked Port Arthur on a Sunday morning to start the Russo-Japanese War at the turn of the century, but you never hear Russians chanting "Remember Port Arthur".
Frenzy
Frank Ching a columnist6 for Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, wrote:
The United States is working itself into frenzy with the approach of the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. But Hong Kong, a victim in Asia of the same coordinated blitzkrieg which resulted in the colony being occupied by the Japanese for three years and eight months plans no official commemorative events.
Clyde Stimson, an American business man here in Tokyo said, around December 6 that he was leaving the following week on a "well-deserved
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
