"It's disconcerting that people who behaved so badly in war can behave so admirably in defeat." (1)
Neither any historical document nor any scholarly account has
been able to recapture the mood of Japanese-American grassroots
interaction in 1945 in the way that Mrs. Yumi Goto does in Those
Days in Muramatsu. As one who was there in Japan as a member
of the American forces in 1945-1946 and as a trained historian
of Japan, I feel especially qualified to evaluate the remarkable
evocation of an era which Mrs. Goto recounts. Certainly memories
dim and memory plays tricks on all of us, but, since Mrs. Goto
recorded her experiences contemporaneously, one feels the profound
veracity of her writing. Moreover, the most unusual phenomenon
of a Japanese woman purposefully recording her impressions in
English so that some day they might be read by Americans reinforces
her credibility.
I am particularly pleased to attest to my great personal delight
as well as my intense response when Mrs. Goto's work first came
to my attention. Indeed, it was her son, Kenichi, the distinguished
scholar of modern Indonesia and my colleague and friend of many
years, who was kind enough to share his mother's manuscript with
me. In fact, he himself had not known of the existence of Those
Days in Muramatsu until about ten years ago at the time of
Mrs. Goto's having major surgery. According to Prof. Goto, just
before his mother, who lives with his family, left for the hospital,
she handed him the manuscript and said it was something special
to her which she wanted him to have in case she did not survive
the operation. Very happily, of course, not only has Mrs. Goto
recovered, but her previously unknown manuscript has at last reached
publication.
In presenting Those Days in Muramatsu to the reading public,
it should be remembered that the time frame of it, September to
December 1945, was a unique period in the history of Japanese-American
relations. Victor and vanquished, occupier and occupied, wartime
prosperity and wartime devastation were all immediate attributes
of the United States and Japan respectively. In order to appreciate
Mrs. Goto's vignettes of that time, psychological factors need
to be elicited, in particular euphoria for Americans and despair
for Japanese. The Americans who came to Japan, after having defeated
both Germany and Japan, were more convinced than ever of the righteousness
of democracy American-style while the Japanese, who had been indoctrinated
in the superiority of their national "spirituality,' in 1945
were in an almost dysfunctional miasma of despond. Curiously,
however, at the onset of the Occupation both these attitudes resulted
in a high degree of mutual tolerance and generosity. The Americans,
missionary-like in their determination to democratize the Japanese,
and the Japanese, tabula-rasa-like in their eagerness to
accept "demokurashii," which, after all, had won the
war, found a high degree of common ground, particularly at the
human level. And it is at that very human level that Mrs. Goto's
insights excite and attract us.
As a member of a distinguished family of educators and as a graduate
of the foremost prewar women's college, Tsuda, Mrs. Goto, who
had attained a marked fluency in the English language, was, like
some others of her generation, well qualified for her role as
interpreter between the Occupation and her Japanese employers.
As an evacuee from the bombing of Tokyo, it was, of course, pure
chance that gave her the unique and surely unanticipated opportunity
to work in this capacity in Muramatsu. However, Mrs. Goto was
by no means the only educated Japanese woman to utilize her bilingual
skills. As one who personally employed at ATIS (Allied Translator
and Interpreter Section GHQ SCAP) tens of such women, some of
whom were like Mrs. Goto Tsuda graduates or had studied abroad
at such schools as Radcliffe, Wellesley, or Bryn Mawr, I recognize
both the contributions these women made to the day-to-day operation
of the Occupation as well as to changing the status of women in
Japan. For, suddenly, necessity both for desperately needed income
for their families and for the requirements of an English-speaking
Occupation gave unprecedented opportunities for these women to
become breadwinners on an equal footing with their male counterparts.
Moreover, at least at GHQ SCAP we were perhaps the first employers
in Japan to offer equal pay for equal work. Accordingly, women
like Mrs. Goto and her peers were truly pioneers in Japanese society,
assuming responsibilities and obligations heretofore singularly
uncommon among Japanese women.
Further, what Mrs. Goto so tellingly conveys to us in her writing
is the almost unbelievable innocence or perhaps insouciance of
a bygone era. Her depiction of American GI's as "boys"
is so refreshing and so accurate. As one of those "boys,"
a rosy-cheeked 20-year old lieutenant who had grown up in a highly
protected, fairly insulated middle class Midwestern American environment,
I recall vividly both my naiveté as I began to occupy Japan
as well as my openness to new customs, new insights, new sounds,
and most importantly, new ideas. Conversely the Japanese, who
had been led to expect their brutalization if not their demise
at the hands of us "battle-hardened" enemy soldiers,
were charmed and fascinated by everything about us, especially
the relative gentility of the Americans whom they encountered.
If all of this is hard to imagine in an era of high tech microchips
and hard-nosed Japan-US trade disputes, read Mrs. Goto's revealing
account. Of course, 1945 will never come again, but it is, I believe,
very valuable to have this meaningful narrative of a simpler and
gentler time in the immediate aftermath of such a bloody conflict.
Perhaps publishing Mrs. Goto's work now can serve as a valuable
reminder to both Americans and Japanese of how we interacted half
a century ago. Accordingly, Those Days in Muramatsu should
generate a certain nostalgia for "the way we were,"
and, in turn, may serve to mitigate some of the strains in current
Japan-United States relations.
(1) Professor B.F. McGuiness quoted in Francis King, Yesterday Came Suddenly (London: Constable, 1993), p.90.