American influence on the Memory of Japanese and German War Histories

In his "Entangled Memories, Visions of the Past in Germany and Japan," Sebastian Conrad points out the tremendous influence of the United States in the post-war memory of Western Germany and Japan.  Specifics in Japanese and West German histories distinguished their historical writings: the West German historians maintained an independent mindedness.  In their pursuit of a democracy in West Germany, they also asserted their independent stories of Nazi Germany, including German resistance toward Nazism to correct the distortions of the pseudo truths from the past, and also to give a more correct depiction of life under authoritarianism, since the Americans had never lived under such.  In contrast, the immediate postwar historians in Japan were largely Marxist historians freed from jail by the American occupational forces to combat the remnants of militarism, their nemesis.  Even though very different in outlook, the American occupational forces and Japanese Marxist historians were strange bedfellows in their agreement on a version of Japanese history that was feudal and a society that needed structural reform.  This meant they accepted major changes in Japanese society, including demilitarization, and the Tokyo war trial, with no reservation.  That in itself, the Tokyo Trial and American changes to Japan in the new constitution, became sources of grievance to some groups of Japanese, who eventually would want to get back to the liberals/Communists/Americans through acts of history rewriting--revision of history textbooks.

Another argument of Conrad was American policies in Japan conveniently helped with the cause of some Japanese to marginalize the Asian aspect of World War II.  The U.S. hegemony in militarily occupying Japan after WWII, and in the Tokyo War Trial as well as postwar Japanese society, and the hegemony of the US view overshadowed the views of the Chinese, Koreans and other Asian countries. The Japanese referred to WWII in Asia as the “Pacific War”—a name for the phase of the war after 1941, when the US joined. “The privileged position of the USA colluded in the marginalization of Japan's military involvement in China and Korea during the war.” It coincided with Japan’s policy of “de-Asianization” after WWII.  Japanese victimization of other Asian nations and the history of Japanese violence on the Asian mainland remained largely undiscussed. The war appeared, in the first place, as a conflict between Japan and the USA. The atrocities committed on the Asian mainland - the Nanjing massacre, the biochemical experiments of Unit 731, the forced prostitution throughout Asia -were excluded from debate. In Japanese discourse, 'Asia' disappeared in a historiographical vacuurn.' (Conrad, p.92)

Furthermore, after the Cold War started, in preparing Japan as a strategic partner against Communism in Asia, the U.S. was eager to write off Japan's militarist past, in school textbooks, where fascism was just a temporary aberration from the norm of modernization. America’s goal also became Japan’s goal.

Japan's decision not to face its war past with other Asian countries, however, came under great pressure with increasing criticism by other Asian countries because of the end of the cold war and modernization of these countries.  And more economic contacts between Japan and these countries.