50 Years Later, Japan Finds Peace and Uncertainty

Today, the 50th anniversary of the peace treaty that officially ended the state of war between Japan and the United States, finds this Asian nation infinitely more prosperous, powerful and respected than it was five decades ago.

But the two eras also bear some resemblance. Japan, now as then, is suffering from great collective angst with little sense of where it is headed. And half a century after the signing, the nation is still heavily intertwined economically and militarily with the U.S., even as Japan grapples with the unresolved legacy of its responsibility for its role in World War II and its treatment of prisoners during the conflict--both issues arguably papered over by the treaty.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will attend a ceremony marking the anniversary in San Francisco today. The Asahi newspaper in Tokyo reported Friday that Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka will take the opportunity to apologize to former U.S. prisoners of war. That said, both governments maintain their line that any financial claims were absolved under the 50-year-old San Francisco Peace Treaty.

“There’s no particular basis to pursue these claims,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said this week.

In retrospect, 1951 proved a turning point when desperation gave way to hope. Over the subsequent four decades, Japan rose from the rubble to become the world’s second-largest economy, only to fall during the past decade into a deep funk. In the 21st century, things seem to only be getting worse. Many long for another rebirth.

“I hope, as we saw with the U.S. after the 1980s, that Japan will be back again. But I don’t know,” said former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa. “There’s very, very great pessimism today. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. People don’t even know how long the tunnel is to begin with.”

Few people interviewed who lived during the summer of 1951 retain strong memories of Sept. 8, 1951, in the way most do of the time six years earlier when Emperor Hirohito announced the war’s end in a radio broadcast, an electrifying statement from someone long treated as a god.

Nor did they have much time by 1951 to consider issues much beyond their noses, several people said. “There was no psychological room to think much about it,” said Tohei Sakaguchi, a retired manager of a trading company. “We could only think about finding food.”

One of the few who recalled the day well is Miyazawa, who as a young aide was part of Japan’s San Francisco delegation. At the last minute, then-Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida decided that he would give his speech in Japanese rather than English. Miyazawa and other junior officers combed San Francisco’s Chinatown for scrolls so that Yoshida could read his speech in traditional Japanese fashion.

“But no scroll was long enough, so we had to paste scroll after scroll in this long corridor in one of the suites and divide up the calligraphy,” Miyazawa recalled. “But as the prime minister spoke, it looked like a roll of toilet paper dangling. It was the first time many Americans saw such a scroll being dangled.”

It also was one of the first U.S. coast-to-coast television broadcasts, participants say. Because the technology was in its infancy, however, members of the U.S. and Japanese delegations were told to stay still or move slowly so that images wouldn’t blur.

Though the beginning of the Korean War the previous year had given Japan a much-needed economic boost, most never imagined that their nation would one day become an economic power that, at its peak in the late 1980s, would challenge even its patron.

“By then, Japan was viewed as being 10 feet high by Americans,” said Yoshio Okawara, president of the Institute for International Policy Studies and a former ambassador to the U.S. “It was a completely false image.”

In retrospect, the San Francisco gathering 50 years ago contained some important kernels of hope. The signing became a sort of debutante ball as Japan returned to the global community after the humiliation of World War II. It led, by 1956, to membership in the United Nations. And the San Francisco conference also saw the signing of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty that put Tokyo in the American camp in the emerging fight against global communism.

“We hated America and England during the war and thought they were devils,” said Toshiro Taguchi, a 76-year-old pensioner living in Tokyo. “But by 1951, people felt relieved we hadn’t been taken over by the Russians. Even though we’d been defeated, we’d been defeated by the better country.”

For most, however, big-picture issues were passing thoughts at best back then. Far more trenchant among those now in their 60s and 70s are the memories of black market deals and the constant scraping to get the family through another week. If they thought much about U.S.-Japan relations, it was often based on a chance meeting with some lowly American soldier.

“Americans were so different from what I’d heard about,” said Susumu Tomono, a 76-year-old retired construction worker. “They did ‘ladies first.’ This was very strange for us. And their food was so rich! One day I saw U.S. soldiers listening to the radio in an Army truck and was so surprised. My, they can even listen to the radio in a vehicle, I thought.”

Japan has marked today’s anniversary with a new 80-yen postage stamp, special history courses at universities and symposiums sponsored by major newspapers. “Everything started in 1951,” gushes one Web site devoted to the anniversary. A caravan of Japanese visitors will tour the U.S., and 13 Japanese will wrap up their five-month, 3,200-mile walking trek around America at the Golden Gate Bridge this week.

Takayuki Nakanishi, group leader of the friendship walk, said the Americans they met along the way have been friendly and open, if occasionally a bit uninformed about Japan. The group didn’t meet a single person who could identify his nation’s prime minister, Nakanishi said, and many seemed to confuse Japan with China. “Some even think [we] Japanese still wear kimonos and swords in our daily life,” he said.

For some, today’s milestone provides an opportunity to take a good look at U.S.-Japan relations and at what Japan must overcome. Critics say that by absolving Japan of any obligation to pay war reparations, the treaty allowed the nation to sidestep many issues, including the treatment of Asians and Western POWs.

“I wanted the emperor to come to terms with the war before the San Francisco treaty,” said Akira Yamada, a 76-year-old former school principal living in Shimane prefecture. “In the end I don’t think he ever did.”

This dislocation also has carried over to the social front, added Hiromasa Mukai, a 76-year-old company director from Hiroshima. In return for peace and economic prosperity, Japan too often relinquished control of its own destiny.

“So many things just don’t work these days,” he said. “This is the price we’re paying for not shaping our own social system a half-century ago.”

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Makiko Inoue in The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.