PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE : ‘I Can’t Believe You Guys Dropped the Bomb on Us’

TOKYO —  I was in the third grade at a public school in New York when I first learned about Pearl Harbor. “I can’t believe you guys dropped the bomb on us!” a girl yelled at me. For a moment, I didn’t know what she was talking about. The next thing I remember was that I was crying; I heard my friends saying, “It’s OK, Shiho.”

But it wasn’t OK. I was Japanese. Ever since that day I have been haunted by the thought that I have no place in the United States, no matter how shin-bei (pro-American) I become.

When I returned to Japan two years later, the response to the “day of infamy,” as President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it, was quite different: It was merely the beginning of the Pacific War. My text books only briefly described the attack on Pearl Harbor. Much more weight was put on the dropping of the atomic bomb. Hiroshima was not only extensively covered in my history books, it was also prominent in our readers.

By contrast, we did not bother to discuss Pearl Harbor--at least not in class. So, I asked my grandfather, who was based in Shanghai during the war.

The attack on Pearl Harbor, he recalled, was “inevitable.” It was just retaliation for America’s economic sanctions against Japan. It was, after all, blood for oil. Of course, he has changed his mind about the war over the years, now calling his previous views “the sad result of a biased education.”

“People were not informed about what was really going on at that time,” he said. Manchuria, Korea, Pearl Harbor, as well as the people of Japan, were the victims of one’s own ignorance.”

My grandfather is right. And we must never again be the victims of ignorance.

I understand that the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor will be equivalent to the memorial services-- irei-sai (consolation of the dead)--at Hiroshima. But isn’t it time to leave the ghosts to rest in peace?

Each year, we’re adding more ghosts as a result of prejudice and misunderstanding. It seems as though we haven’t learned anything. Yes, the upcoming anniversary is significant. But its purpose should not be to emotionally relive Dec. 7, 1941, but to go beyond it. Otherwise, commemoration of any kind becomes egoistic. And it is no more than a ritual.

What happened at Pearl Harbor is not just something between the United States and Japan. Today, Pearl Harbor is a cornerstone of world peace, not simply a reminder of the past. We must enlarge our perspective as we look ahead. In a way, the ken-bei (anti-American) attitude is recreated through the media on account of the 50th anniversary. But if the legacy of Pearl Harbor can still damage relations between the United States and Japan, neither of us have accomplished anything since the attack.

Pearl Harbor, as well as Hiroshima, means more than a single nation’s memory of disgrace. Mankind as a whole cannot escape blame. In that sense, blaming each other and arguing over who was the real profiteer is disgraceful.

It took us 50 years to come this far, and we still have a long way to go. But I am optimistic about future U.S.-Japan relations. I certainly hope that our relationship is not so feeble as to be jeopardized by ignorance and misinterpretation. After all, there are people, like me, who are proud to be shin-bei . And I would like to let my friends in the States to know that I still believe in our friendship.