Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps Major General, prior to World War II, sarcastically noted that American naval maneuvers near Japan would have an effect. Butler wrote, “the Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon’s shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.” War is a Racket, pg. 49. (Butler, at the time of his death was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.)

The animosity between Japan and the United States started earlier with the Treaty of Kanagawa, when Matthew C. Perry, practicing gunboat diplomacy under the ideology of Manifest Destiny, now extended beyond America’s shores, “sailed into Tokyo Bay with a fleet of war ships in July of 1853 and demanded that the Japanese open their ports to U.S. ships for supplies. Perry then left Japan in order to give the government a few months to consider its decision. When he returned in February 1854, the Japanese, aware that none of their armaments was a match for Perry’s warships, agreed to admit U.S. ships to the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate and to accept a U.S. consul at Shimoda.” The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica.

The signing of the Treaty of Kanagawa by the Japanese was swiftly followed by more demands. Four years later, a second treaty was signed. The Harris Treaty of 1858 between the U.S. and Japan was an agreement that “provided for the opening of five additional ports to U.S. trade; it also exempted U.S. citizens living in the ports from the jurisdiction of Japanese law.”  The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica.

This exemption from Japanese law was an affront to Japanese sovereignty and stimulated an aggressive policy (Meiji Restoration) to modernize their military. It hardly engendered good will between the two countries. (The Japanese were aware of the Opium Wars and the subsequent territorial secessions made by the Chinese government.

The later sacking of Beijing by a coalition of countries including the United States in 1900 further spurred their modernization efforts.) The proof of the animosity it engendered manifested itself at the Battle of Moscow when Stalin learned of the Japanese decision not to attack its mortal enemy, Russia, but America instead. Apparently the Japanese felt more threatened by the Americans. This decision allowed the Russians to transfer troops from Siberia to Moscow and defeat the Germans outside Moscow.

Smedley was right; the Japanese were a proud people. Not only had they modernized but copied America’s own expansionist policy, treating their conquered as kindly as the Native Americans and African Americans were treated. The atomic bomb ended their aspirations.

Today, Manifest Destiny has a new name, American Exceptionalism. Yesterday we were practicing war games off Japan’s shores. Today we are practicing war games off Russia’s borders. The difference is Russia has nukes as well.

Philip Sharac
Bristol