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Article
Comparative American Studies
An International Journal
Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and
New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com Vol 3(3): 345–360
DOI: 10.1177/1477570005055990 http://cas.sagepub.com
War memories across the Pacific
Japanese visitors at the Arizona Memorial
Yujin Yaguchi
University of Tokyo, Japan
Abstract This article investigates Japanese visitors’ experiences of the
Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, based on results gained from fieldwork
observations, questionnaires, and personal interviews. Japanese visitors
tend to understand the memorial and interpret its significance quite
differently from the majority of US visitors. Nonetheless, the memorial
clearly functions as a site for enhancing national consciousness for
Japanese as well as US visitors, as they become acutely aware of their
difference from Americans and in so doing reconfirm their own sense of
national identity. While the Japanese understanding of the memorial
serves to de-Americanize the significance of one of the most recognized
national landmarks in the United States, it simultaneously reinforces the
site’s function as a national memorial by crystallizing a sense of difference based on national identities and encouraging a historical understanding based on a nationalist framework.
Keywords Hawai`i ● Pearl Harbor
● Japanese ● war memories
●
US national memorials
●
tourism
The Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawai`i, which commemorates
the surprise attack on a US territory by Japanese forces in 1941, is one
of the most recognized landmarks in the United States. Designed by the
architect Alfred Preis and built in 1960, it is dedicated to the more than
one thousand men who perished on board the battleship Arizona on 7
December 1941. The memorial stands over the battleship, which remains
sunken under the waters of Pearl Harbor to this day. The contrast
between the bright white color of the memorial under the blue Hawaiian
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sky and the rusty surface of the old ship in the water generates a powerful
feeling among many visitors. The memorial, located about a 30-minute
drive from Waikiki, is one of the most popular sites among the tourists
from the US mainland who come to Hawai`i, attracting nearly 1.5 million
people a year.
The Arizona Memorial has also attracted the attention of scholars,
many of whom are interested in furthering the understanding of the ways
in which such places form and condition social memories of the war and
understanding of the nation. Edward Linenthal (1993) provides a historical overview of the memorial and explains the continuous efforts of the
National Park Service to prevent this ‘sacred site’ from being ‘contaminated’ by contested interpretations of the memorial. Kathy Ferguson and
Phyllis Turnbull (1999) analyze how the memorial serves to neutralize
the presence of US forces in Hawai`i for the tourists while reinforcing
the discourse of US nationalism as well as white masculinity in the
supposed paradise in the Pacific. In describing the making of the film
shown at the visitors’ center, Geoffrey White (2001) identifies a continuing tension between the attempt of the National Park Service staff to
show a balanced historical analysis of the event and the desire of many
visitors to find a site strongly devoted to the promotion of patriotic
national memory. Emily Rosenberg (2003) shows how different images of
Pearl Harbor have been evoked over the past six decades in multiple and
at times contested ways in response to the various changes and tensions
in the contemporary American culture. These analyses show that the
majority of the Americans find the Arizona Memorial to be one of the
USA’s most important patriotic national monuments and that the experiences of the visitors at the memorial generally enhance their identification with and celebration of the eventual victory of the United States
in this ‘good war’.
In contrast with such monuments as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
in Washington, DC, whose design as well as reception is said to produce
competing meanings of the site as well as of the past (Sturken, 1997), the
intended significance of the Arizona Memorial seems rather clear. The
Vietnam Veterans Memorial, located in the nation’s capital and dedicated
to the people who fought in the war that the USA lost, allows its visitors
to read different narratives of the war-time experience and reflect upon
the personal losses as well as the contemporary national policies and
social conditions that led the nation into this debacle. In contrast, the
Arizona Memorial, more than 6000 miles away from the capital and
located in one of the most important military facilities of the USA, offers
a more uniform meaning of the earlier war and its significance. Ferguson
and Turnbull argue that the ‘never-fully-replaced loss that the death of
someone close to us leaves is literally palpable at the Vietnam Wall but is
abstract and abstracted by the Arizona Memorial’ (Ferguson and
Turnbull, 1999: 148). While individual losses are by no means discounted
at the site, the memorial in Pearl Harbor abstracts these losses into the
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larger discourse of national commemoration.1 The foregrounding of the
national seems all the more important in this newest state of the union,
a state that was once an independent kingdom and in which the US
government was directly and illegally involved in its overthrow in 1893.
By enshrining the individual US deaths on this island in the Pacific at the
start of the Second World War as supreme sacrifices paid for the nation,
the memorial positions the area as integral to the USA and orients its
visitors toward a heightened sense of national-subject position as
Americans.
However, in a state where the economy is in significant part sustained
by global tourism, visitors to the site are not limited to American nationals. In particular, every day, amongst the many visitors from the US
mainland, one can find Japanese tourists walking through the museum
located at the visitors’ center, watching the introductory film with translation headsets, riding the Navy boat to the memorial, and gazing at the
sunken battleship that was bombed by the Japanese planes more than 60
years ago.
Edward Linenthal writes how some US visitors to the memorial see the
presence of these Japanese as a ‘physical defilement’ of this sacred site.
Complaints about the irreverent attitude of Japanese visitors are not
uncommon (though very few cases are actually substantiated).2 Linenthal
cites an incident in which an American man who mistook a group of
Filipino visitors as Japanese asked the superintendent, ‘Why are those
Japs here?’ (Linenthal, 1993: 192). While expressions of such a negative
feeling against the Japanese visitors are neither condoned nor accepted
among the staff of the memorial (nothing in the visitors’ center and the
memorial shows overt hostility to Japan or the Japanese people), this
question of why the Japanese come and, more importantly, what the
memorial means to them remains unexplored.
In her discussion of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Marita Sturken
suggests that a memorial is not simply a site where the sense of past is
reinforced but is at the same time a site where history becomes reinscribed through articulation. She argues that the Vietnam Memorial needs
to be understood within the ‘context of a very active scripting and
rescripting of the war’ by the visitors for whom memories take the form
of ‘cultural reenactment’ that enables their ‘catharsis and healing’
(Sturken, 1997: 75, 17). So often in the studies of national memorials,
these visitors who are articulating and scripting various forms of history
are uncritically defined as the citizens of the nation that is commemorated at the site. But in the case of the Arizona Memorial, visitors are
clearly not only Americans. This article focuses on Japanese experiences
of the memorial in order to investigate the meaning of a national
memorial for those who are not only non-citizens of that nation but are
in fact citizens of the nation that caused the very tragedy remembered at
the site. What is it that they are remembering at the memorial and what
kind of history are they seeing at the site? What kind of past is scripted
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and rescripted? What kind of memories are reenacted for their catharsis
and healing? In short, how do these visitors construct the significance of
the memorial? And how, in turn, does this memorial condition their
identity (White, 1995)?
Based on observations gained from fieldwork conducted on site from
April to August of 2002 and from reading visitor survey questionnaires
voluntarily filled out by visitors, I want to propose that many Japanese
see the historic significance of the memorial differently from visitors from
the US mainland. At the same time I also argue that, despite the different
meanings Japanese visitors tend to find in the memorial, the significance
of the Arizona Memorial as a national memorial remains strong, as it
enhances the nationalist orientation of Japanese visitors. In that respect,
whereas many Japanese visitors (often unwittingly) de-Americanize the
significance of one of the most important American memorials from their
non-US perspectives, their attitude embraces the essentialized notion of
the nation-state and therefore is consistent with the perspectives of many
of their fellow American visitors to the site. The article suggests the possibilities and challenges of de-Americanizing the global by looking at how
the globalized flow of capital and people through international tourism
today brings people of different national identities to sites where the
American national identity is celebrated and how this produces multiple
understandings of such sites within the framework of contemporary
international relations.
Japanese visitors to Hawai`i and to the Arizona
Memorial
Hawai`i receives about seven million visitors every year from all over the
world. The Japanese have particularly been drawn to the islands since
the restriction on foreign travel for pleasure was lifted in 1964. During
the years of economic prosperity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the
number of visitors from Japan to Hawai`i grew rapidly and reached two
million in 1996. While the economic stagnation as well as the heightened
security concerns of travelers in the late 1990s and early 2000s has
caused a decline in the number of visitors – to about 1.5 million a year –
Hawai`i remains one of the most popular vacation destinations among
the Japanese. The state of Hawai`i promotes the islands in Japan aggressively because its economy depends heavily on the money spent by these
visitors (State of Hawai`i, 2001).
The overwhelming majority of visitors from Japan stay for at least
some time in O`ahu (where Honolulu is located) while they are in Hawai`i,
though in recent years an increasing number of visitors are flying to other
islands in search of the ‘real’ Hawaiian experience (Ikezawa, 1996;
Yaguchi and Yoshihara, 2005). The average length of their stay on the
island is less than six days and many spend most of their time shopping
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and enjoying the beach. A few venture out to areas outside of Waikiki to
go visit ‘cultural sites’ such as the Bishop Museum and Honolulu
Academy of Arts, both of which can be accessed by trolley buses operated
by tour companies.
The exact figure for Japanese visitors to the Arizona Memorial is
unknown because the Park Service does not keep a complete tally of
different nationals who visit the site. A visitor survey conducted in 2000
estimates it to be less than 10 percent of all the visitors (Visitor Services
Project Cooperative, 2000: 11). This would mean that about 150,000
Japanese visitors, or about 10 percent of the total who arrive in Hawai`i,
come to the memorial every year, a number which is in sharp contrast
with visitors from the mainland USA, for whom the experience is generally considered ‘a must’.
A significant proportion of those Japanese who visit the memorial do
so as part of a group tour. A half-day tour of Pearl Harbor from Waikiki
usually costs between $40 and $50. It leaves from Waikiki hotels early in
the morning and includes tours of both the Arizona Memorial and the USS
Bowfin Museum, located just across from the visitors’ center, where a
submarine that was known as the ‘Pearl Harbor avenger’ during the war
is displayed. A half-day or one-day tour of O`ahu, costing anywhere
between $80 to $300, also includes a stop in Pearl Harbor. But while
seeing the introductory film at the visitors’ center and taking the boat trip
to the memorial takes at least 75 minutes, many of these tours provide
only about 30 minutes – just enough time for the visitors to walk through
the small museum located at the visitors’ center and view the memorial
from the shore. In recent years, the number of Japanese visitors who
come on their own by either taking the local bus or taxi or renting a car
is increasing. Depending on the time required to wait before they can see
the film and take the boat ride, which can be up to three hours during the
busy summer months, many of them also simply decide to walk around
the visitors’ center and look at the memorial from the shore. These
visitors are not inclined to ‘waste’ so much time at the memorial because
their visit is often scheduled as a brief stopping-point on their tour of the
island.
Accordingly, there is a great degree of difference in how Japanese
visitors tour the memorial. Some spend only half an hour or less, while
those who do the entire tour, consisting of the introductory film and the
boat ride to the memorial, will spend at least one and a half hours in the
area. The visitors I interviewed during my fieldwork were those who took
the entire tour. Those who answered the visitor survey questionnaire
were also mostly visitors who spent a significant amount of time at the
memorial. Therefore, it must be remembered that the information used
in this article is based on a relatively select group of people – those who
decided to spend some time at the memorial and then, after the tour, were
willing to share their feelings and experiences by filling out the questionnaire or in personal interviews.
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When I first began doing research at the memorial, I had expected to
see fewer young visitors because I assumed they would be interested in
activities other than this kind of history lesson during their vacation in
Hawai`i. However, the age group of the visitors seemed to vary considerably. While those who came on tour buses tended to be of the middleaged to older generation, quite a few young men and women – often as
couples or in groups – showed up on their own. The summer of 2002
might have been exceptional because the film Pearl Harbor had just been
released in Japan and was well received, particularly among the younger
fans of action films and of the actor Ben Affleck. Similarly, the gender and
the occupational background of the visitors varied considerably. Overall,
the profile of Japanese visitors to the memorial was diverse, just like the
profile of the visitors to Hawai`i, which, unlike two or three decades ago,
is no longer predominantly made up of middle-class men (Yaguchi, 2002).
The motivations for coming to the memorial seemed equally diverse.
Some, as mentioned above, had been influenced by the film. Older people
tended to say they wanted to come because they remembered the wartime experience and wanted to see where ‘it all started’. Some came
because it was one of the stops made during the island tour. Many others,
particularly those who came on their own rather than through the tour,
had come simply because they had run out of places to go or wanted to
do something different from shopping and sun-bathing. Most of these
people had been in Hawai`i previously and were looking for a new experience. They had very little specific knowledge about the attack since the
incident is not emphasized in Japanese history education.3 Only after
completing the tour did many realize the extent of the damage the
Japanese attack caused in Pearl Harbor and expressed great surprise to
learn that so many people died on that day.
Whose national memorial?
As mentioned earlier, the National Park Service, which jointly operates
the site with the Navy, distributes voluntary visitor survey questionnaire
sheets to those who wish to leave their impression of the memorial. The
sheets are available both in English and Japanese and list a series of questions with regard to their impressions of the museum, film, memorial and
other aspects of the site. The questionnaire also provides a blank box
where visitors are free to write their impressions or comments about the
place. Over the years, a number of Japanese visitors have filled out this
form and I had access to approximately 400 completed forms.
The comments reveal a great deal about the variety of feelings the
memorial triggered in the minds of these Japanese visitors. Among these,
one theme that appears consistently is the visitors’ desire to define the
memorial as a monument dedicated to peace. There is a constant use of
phrases such as ‘war is terrible’, ‘no more war’ and ‘peace is important’.
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A 76-year-old woman wrote, ‘War is the worst thing’ and demanded ‘the
leaders should exercise responsibility and care for the people so that they
will be able to live out their lives happily as human beings’. A 12-yearold girl wrote, ‘[After the tour] I felt that war is a very bad thing. It is the
same as making people die’. A 26-year-old man noted that the ‘good point’
about the memorial is that he was ‘able to realize again the tragedy and
emptiness of wars as well as the reason why the war happened’. Finally,
a 62-year-old man argued ‘it is important to leave this as a memorial
forever so that we can confront this unfortunate incident in the past and
establish an everlasting peace between the USA and Japan. I thank god
that I am able to visit this place in this way at a peaceful time’.4
The tendency of the Japanese visitors to regard the Arizona Memorial
as a peace monument is conditioned by the fact that many war sites in
Japan, such as the museums in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Okinawa, are
generally dedicated to the idea of spreading peace.5 A strong anti-war
message is embedded in the narratives of such museums, as they define
the Japanese citizens during the Second World War as tragic victims of
bombings and attacks by their enemies. Japanese visitors adopt this
perspective when viewing the sunken battleship and find a parallel
tragedy in the narrative that describes the dead soldiers of the Arizona as
hapless victims who perished on a quiet Sunday morning without fully
realizing what was happening. ‘Even though it was an unavoidable war,’
wrote a 50-year-old woman, ‘it is regrettable that young lives were
destroyed in the water. I hope the peace will last’.
While such a way of interpreting the site within the cultural context
provided by war memorials in Japan is understandable, it is nevertheless
in sharp contrast with the way most American visitors understand the
site. To the visitors from the mainland USA, the memorial celebrates the
courage of American soldiers that led to the eventual victory over Japan.
But at the same time, it also shows a low point in US history, when it was
‘suddenly and deliberately’ attacked by enemy forces and suffered a
devastating loss of life and ships. In that respect, the memorial pays
respect to the unfortunate sacrifice of lives of the soldiers and provides a
lesson in failure that should never be repeated. It reminds visitors of the
importance of never letting the nation’s guard down and of the need for
investing in protecting the nation’s territory and its assets (Linenthal,
1993: 182; Piehler, 1995: 152). The fact that the number of visitors to the
site increased significantly after the attacks on World Trade Center and
Pentagon on 11 September 2001 was interpreted by several park rangers
as evidence that many American visitors continued to share this way of
understanding the site as a rallying point for national defense.
Because the majority of the Japanese see the Arizona Memorial as a
site dedicated to opposing wars, many expressed a strong desire to see
references to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, in Japan, serve together as
a metonymic symbol of peace, in the museum exhibit. A woman I interviewed said:
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I have been in Waikiki since the end of June [two months]. The most
impressive place I have visited so far is the Arizona Memorial. I even
recommended my friend from ukulele class to go there. When I saw the film, I
just could not hold back my tears. As I listened to the Japanese translation, I
remembered a peace rally I attended in Nagasaki 15 years ago. I could almost
hear the cry of the people and felt a strong pain in my heart. Tears kept
running even after the film and I had to wear my sunglasses. When I went to
the memorial and stood above the sunken ship, I felt horrified. More than
1000 people are still inside the ship. I wrote in the questionnaire that the film
shown at the Arizona Memorial should also be shown in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. In turn, the memorial should also show a film on the A-bombs. This
is to show that both nations suffered a great deal and there is no happiness in
wars.
Similarly, a 32-year-old woman wrote in a questionnaire, ‘I want Americans to know about Japan, about A-bombs, about the reality Japanese
faced, too’, because such a mutual understanding ‘leads to our agreement
that war should never be repeated’. A 54-year-old schoolteacher wrote,
‘our lesson to the Japanese should be “Remember Pearl Harbor”, and to
Americans it should be, “Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki”’. A 23-yearold man captured this sentiment in another way: ‘You emphasize that a
large number of Americans was killed. But you should also discuss
Hiroshima and Nagasaki so as to show the horror of wars’.
Such a way of contextualizing the Arizona Memorial within the framework of the use of A-bombs and the promotion of peace is quite at odds
with the way the National Park Service and Navy present this site today.
The only direct reference to the bombing of Japan in the museum appears
in a video presentation, originally produced by the History Channel, that
explains the events before and during the war. Otherwise, the memorial
avoids direct references to atomic bombs and mostly focuses on the
events leading up to the attack and the fate of US soldiers on that day as
well as the subsequent development of the war, particularly the remarkably rapid recovery of many of the ships that were damaged by the
Japanese attack. As one ranger privately told me, the Park Service would
like to ‘avoid getting into any controversy about the use of A-bombs – we
do not want another Smithsonian case here’. Whereas Japanese visitors
see in the Arizona Memorial the first chapter of a longer historical narrative that ends with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thereby defining the sunken
battleship as an essential prelude to the story of the horrible war as well
as the mistake committed by the Japanese government, the memorial is
presented to Americans as a dedication to an incident that united the
spirit of Americans and led them into a victorious war.
Not only do many Japanese position the memorial differently in their
framework of history from many of the US visitors, but they also feel their
physical difference from others at the site: they become extremely
conscious that they are Japanese. Many visitors to the memorial, whether
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American or Japanese, gain a heightened sense of national subject
position as the whole environment – exhibits, films, outdoor displays and
souvenirs in the gift shop as well as the battleship itself – present a
discourse based on the story of a battle between the USA and Japan.
These materials urge them to internalize the boundary between Japan
and the USA and identify themselves nationally rather than with any
other variables of identity. Moreover, this sense of national difference is
also perceived through the experience of having a different language and
bodily appearance from the majority of the visitors. Many Japanese are
unable to comprehend the film without purchasing a translation headset
and cannot (or are not inclined to try to) read the labels in the museum
and panels located along the shore, which are only written in English.
Moreover, they look distinctively different from most of the other visitors
who are, unlike the demographic distribution of Hawai`i, mostly white
men and women from the US mainland. A 19-year-old female was
‘surprised to see there were more white people and fewer Japanese
people around’. ‘The whole time I was on the tour,’ she continued, ‘I kept
thinking that this happened because of what we Japanese did and felt
very sad’. This experience of marginality further reinforces their sense of
difference at the site.
Yet, at the same time, Japanese visitors also consider themselves to be
an integral part of the site because they see themselves as the descendants of the agents of the attack, whose actions constitute a critical
element in the making of this site. When they are confronted by the
description of the Japanese attack, Japanese visitors feel intensely
‘embarrassed’, ‘sorry’ and ‘responsible’ for what happened, as Japanese
nationals.
A man who was born a year before the attack wrote in the comment
sheet, ‘the war was begun because the Japanese were arrogant and
complacent’ and continued, ‘As one of them, I feel sorry’. A 65-year-old
man began his comment by, ‘First of all, I would like to express my sincere
apology to the United States’. A 72-year-old woman lamented, ‘What a
stupid thing we did, even now my heart aches’. This urge to apologize is
not only seen among the older generation but is also shared among the
younger generation. A 28-year-old woman wrote, ‘I am filled with a
feeling of apology’, while a 14-year-old said, ‘Up until now, I had a bit of
grudge [against the USA] for dropping the A-bombs. But I saw this from
the American perspective for the first time and realized that our ancestors did a very bad thing. I am so ashamed and want to apologize.’
Thus to many Japanese the memorial itself is also theirs, even though
they feel alienated and marginalized from the setting of the memorial.
This is a place to reflect upon the actions of their ancestors and apologize
on their behalf and pray for peace in the world. A 26-year-old woman
visited the memorial ‘without thinking much about it’ but ‘when the
whole tour was over’ she felt ‘terrible’. She felt so shocked that she urged
the Japanese to ‘think more deeply’ than she did if they decide to visit
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the place. The combination of their physical and linguistic differences as
well as the narrative structure of the memorial, which emphasizes and
displays the historic tension and animosity between the USA and Japan,
positions many Japanese to claim their Japaneseness strongly. Repeatedly, comments begin with the phrase ‘nihonjin to shite’ or ‘as a
Japanese’. In this respect, despite the different meanings the Japanese
tourists find at the site, the effect of the Arizona Memorial as a national
memorial remains strong.
There was, however, one memorable exception I encountered during
my research at the memorial. This was a moment when the nationalist
discourse of the site was transformed into a more tangibly personal one.
One day, an old Japanese man came with his wife, children, and grandchildren. He had come to Hawai`i because one of his grandchildren was
getting married. As I spoke to his son, I learned it had been the old man’s
wish to see the memorial. ‘Grandpa wanted to visit here for the first time
in almost 60 years,’ he said. This old man had been one of the pilots who
attacked the harbor in 1941.
While I was talking to his son, the man said very little and kept staring
at the harbor from the shore. Then he finally said ‘natsukashii des’, a
phrase that loosely translates as ‘it reminds me of the old days’. I decided
to introduce this veteran to an American survivor of the attack who
happened to be serving as a ‘witness volunteer’ on that day. This man had
been on board USS Pennsylvania on 7 December 1941, and was badly
wounded as a result of the attack. He later retired in Hawai`i and decided
to return to Pearl Harbor as a volunteer to share the story of that day
with visitors. I knew he had been in touch with some Japanese veterans
previously and would be interested in meeting with this Japanese man.
The conversation between the two was brief but suggestive of how
those who can claim ‘we were there on that day’ can appropriate this
public site and personalize it. The American survivor asked the Japanese
man what kind of plane he was flying – whether it was a bomber or attack
plane. The Japanese veteran in turn asked the American which ship he
had been on board that day. Upon hearing the answer, ‘USS Pennsylvania’, he grinned and said, ‘I don’t think I attacked you.’ ‘No kidding,’
the American jokingly retorted and added, ‘I remember seeing you from
the deck!’ The two men then smiled, hugged each other, took photos, and
parted.
The conversation between these two old veterans, which was not
unlike a dialogue from a high school reunion, repositioned the event
within a personal story rather than the more generalized nationalist
narrative of the past presented at the memorial. Of course, as Marie
Thorsten (2002) shows in her analysis of the series of encounters between
American and Japanese veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack during the
decade of the 1990s, the personal framing of the memory of the attack by
the veterans conceals as much as it reveals. The veterans’ sense of ownership over knowledge of the event often precludes different ways of
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historicizing the incident. As Thorsten argues, these encounters, despite
their significance, ultimately bring ‘limited emotional convergences in
enemies with common experiences, while leaving untouched a vast body
of unanswered questions’ (Thorsten, 2002: 338; see also Linenthal, 1993:
203). Nevertheless, this encounter between the two old men and their
personalized reminiscence of the event stands as a notable exception to
the strongly nationalized public memory most visitors derive from this
site. At the same time, it showed how such tangibly personal relations to
the site, something not unlike what frequently happens at the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial, are easily engulfed and silenced by the more public
discourse of international history and international relations at this
memorial.
Erasing competing voices
Japanese visitors’ tendency to see a nationally framed history strengthens other exclusionary forces at the memorial. That is, their strong
identity as Japanese nationals deflects visitors’ attention from such issues
as ‘capitalist economic expansion, nationalism, and military domination
that exist in common across national borders’ (Yoneyama, 2001: 337). The
most vivid example of this is a complete lack of reference to and interest
in what this site had been prior to the Second World War. Because this
site is defined as the ‘beginning’ of a seminal event in the history of
US–Japanese relations, it is difficult for Japanese visitors to imagine the
time preceding that beginning in Hawai`i. Not surprisingly, few Japanese,
if any, ask questions of what this had been prior to the Japanese attack.
A question such as the significance of the area for native Hawaiians in
the 19th century is hardly raised. Moreover, because the memorial defines
itself as the place where the conflict between the two nations began, the
visitors generally do not question the significance of the war outside the
site. What happened as a result of the attack to Japanese immigrants and
to Americans of Japanese ancestry in Hawai`i, for example, is a question
that was never posed while I was there. As the rhetoric of the memorial
locates the time and space of the war in the USA only within Pearl Harbor
itself, there is almost a complete erasure of the history of local life in and
around the area.6
Furthermore, inasmuch as this memorial is understood as a site for the
remembrance of the history of a tragedy and the celebration of the subsequent peace between the two nations by the Japanese, it transforms the
Second World War into a conflict between Japan and the USA, thereby
erasing the significance of Japan’s earlier colonialist engagements
existing long before the attack in 1941. True, the museum at the memorial
as well as the introductory film shown in the theater mentions the events
leading to the war, which include Japanese aggression in China. But the
effect of ‘this is where it started’ is so strong that the history of Japanese
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activities in Asia prior to the incident is relegated to background, if not
to oblivion.
The repeated request by the Japanese to have Hiroshima and Nagasaki
included in the museum exhibit is indicative of how the memorial encourages a bi-national approach to the understanding of the Second World
War. Many argue that references to Hiroshima and Nagasaki would tell
the story of the war in its ‘entirety’ because that way ‘people can see the
beginning and the ending’. While this type of rhetoric is, as explained
earlier, usually couched in terms of a desire to show the ‘folly of fighting
wars’ and to ‘spread peace in the world’, the plotting of the narrative in
such a way serves to erase what had occurred years before this ‘beginning’. The Arizona Memorial enables the Japanese visitors to gain a linear
narrative that positions the attack on Pearl Harbor as a terribly mistaken
and yet necessary process through which the Japanese were ultimately
able to turn themselves into a peaceful people and establish a normalized
relationship with the USA. After looking at the sunken battleship in the
water, many visitors felt ‘grateful’ for the succeeding peace, and the good
relationship with the USA they enjoy today. The memorial enables the
Japanese visitors to internalize a binary narrative of the war as Japan
versus the USA and thereby to reconfigure Japan’s experiences in the war
as a ‘necessary condition for its postwar peace and prosperity under US
hegemony’ while erasing and absolving the Japanese aggression in Asia
(Igarashi, 2000: 13, 35).
Finally, the nationalist orientation to the understandings of the Pearl
Harbor attack enables Japanese visitors to see and define themselves as
members of an international community interested in maintaining the
stability of the world. By doing so, Japanese visitors can ally themselves
with the Americans as members of today’s world community who have a
vested interest in and responsibility for maintaining peace in the world.
Some of them were especially touched by the recording of the words of
President George Bush, broadcast on the boat as it returns to the visitors’
center from the memorial, derived from a speech he gave at the time of
the 50th anniversary of the attack in 1991. In that speech the former
president and veteran of the Second World War specifically stated that he
had ‘no rancor against the Germans or Japanese’. One visitor wrote that
she found in this phrase the ‘depth and width of the American mind and
felt grateful’. The visitors interpreted Bush’s remark as a gracious gesture
of forgiveness by the leader of the US government, which, in turn,
required them to work hard to promote peace, friendship, and understanding between the two countries. This feeling was particularly notable
during my research, partly because it was only shortly after the terrorist
attacks of 11 September 2001. Japanese visitors defined the Pearl Harbor
attack as an international incident that was fundamentally different from
the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Regardless of how apologetic they were, they
viewed the 12/7 attack as a national act stemming from the need –
however unjustifiable it may have been – to conduct a war against the
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nation of the USA. They viewed the Pearl Harbor incident, which served
as the de facto declaration of war by the nation of Japan against the USA,
as essentially and qualitatively different from the terrorist attacks, which
could not be attributed to any particular nation. While explicit comparisons between the Pearl Harbor attack and the terrorist attack were being
made in the USA (Rosenberg, 2003: 174–89; White, 2003), most Japanese
visitors vigorously denied that there were any parallel structures linking
the two incidents. Instead, they kept emphasizing the importance of binational collaboration between Japan and the USA to maintain peace
responsibly in the world.7 In this respect, the Japanese understanding of
the Pearl Harbor attack at the site enabled the possibility of an international understanding between the USA and Japan through positing the
existence of a common uncivilized other that potentially stood against
them.
Conclusion
Over the years, scholars have investigated various sites of national
commemoration in the USA to understand and critique how such sites
serve to condition the identities of visitors. Different analyses show that
the significance of such memorials is often layered with complexities, as
those who visit such sites see and experience the memorials differently,
affected by their gender, race, class, place of birth, personal experiences,
and other factors (Rosenzweig and Thelen, 1998).
One factor that remains relatively unexplored is the visitors’ citizenships and their national identities. In the USA, there is often an underlying assumption that these memorials are seen and experienced by people
who identify themselves as ‘Americans’. But this is far from the case at
the Arizona Memorial and is probably not so at any other well-known
memorials either, given the current state of global tourism and the
movement of people across national boundaries.
Based on interviews and questionnaires gained during fieldwork
conducted at the site, this article has shown that the significance of the
Arizona Memorial as a national memorial remains strong among both
Japanese and American visitors. True, the Japanese sense of national
belonging, which is primarily generated through their feeling of distance
from the victims of the attack as well as from other visitors at the site,
differs from the patriotic nationalism of the many American visitors who
identify strongly with the victims. Nonetheless the memorial produces an
equally strong feeling of national identity among the Japanese visitors.
I want to end the article by suggesting that the Arizona Memorial
additionally needs to be considered in relation to other tourist sites in
Hawai`i. In particular, the significance of the site should be understood
in relation to Waikiki, where the majority of Japanese visitors stay while
in O`ahu. Because the presence of the Japanese tourists is so economically
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important for the local economy, Waikiki is carefully set up to satisfy the
various demands of the Japanese. Hotels and restaurants as well as many
shops have signs in Japanese and staff who can communicate in
Japanese. Waikiki is so conveniently arranged for the Japanese that some
visitors from Japan even comment rather disapprovingly and disappointedly that ‘Hawai`i is pretty much the same as Japan.’
A 30-minute trip to the Arizona Memorial, however, provides these
Japanese visitors with an entirely different feeling. The contrast between
Japanese-dominated Waikiki and the American-dominated national
memorial in Pearl Harbor is so striking that Japanese visitors frequently
note in the visitor survey questionnaire they are surprised and feel rather
unsettled to find ‘so few Japanese here, unlike Waikiki’. At the same time,
this lack of a Japanese presence and the American-ness of the site satisfy
their expectations as tourists in America. Here is a site that is definitely
not ‘pretty much the same as Japan’, a place where the Japanese are made
to feel ‘other’. This feeling of marginality, which is in sharp contrast with
their experience in Waikiki, further enhances their international perspective on the site and enables them to script and rescript their experience
within a nation-based framework. This scripting, while offering possibilities for de-Americanizing the significance of this American monument,
simultaneously submerges other possible perspectives on the site. Most
visitors are unable to see the memorial and the past it represents in ways
that are not bound by national frameworks. The historically contested
sense of the place as a part of a formerly independent kingdom, which
did not belong to either of the two nations that serve as the constitutive
elements of the memorial today, simply remains unrecognized. Many
Japanese visitors, in that respect, forget as much as they remember
through this intense lesson in history.
Notes
1 It is important to note that the National Park Service pays considerable effort
to mark the site as a ‘sacred tomb’ of the soldiers who died on the day of the
attack. Therefore, some rangers and volunteers not only inform the visitors of
the number of soldiers and civilians killed but also attempt to provide them
with individual stories of some of those who died on the day such as their
names, age, place of birth, siblings (often brothers were on board the same
ship) and what they were doing on the day.
2 White explains that a part of the reason the National Park Service decided to
make a new film for the visitors center was because some visitors thought it
was too ‘deferential’ to the Japanese, since the first film referred to the
‘brilliance’ of Isoroku Yamamoto as a strategist. While I was working as a
volunteer at the site, I heard several complaints about the ‘attitudes of the
Japanese’. In most of these cases, the visitors taken to be Japanese were
Chinese nationals from the Chinese mainland, who tended to come in larger
tour groups (and therefore were often somewhat loud) and whose
understanding of the memorial clearly differs from that of the Japanese.
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3 The attack on Pearl Harbor is explained in Japanese history textbooks but the
students’ knowledge is limited in general. My personal observation at
Japanese universities suggests that very few students know much about the
attack. Few remember the date of the attack and even fewer can accurately
estimate how many were killed on that day. Most think the number of deaths
caused by the Japanese attack was less than 100.
4 These comments were all filled out in Japanese and have been translated by
the author.
5 A notable exception is Yushukan Museum at Yasukuni Shrine, where the
nation’s past wars are glorified as courageous and necessary fights against
western powers. The museum’s message is controversial and despite the
increasing trend towards nationalism in Japan it has not gained widespread
support nor has the site enjoyed as many visitors as the Hiroshima Peace
Museum.
6 A similar point is raised by Ferguson and Turnbull in their analysis of
American visitors at the memorial.
7 Because many Japanese visitors believed in the importance of an
international approach to peace, some were actually quite critical of George
W. Bush’s unilateralist policy in bombing Afghanistan and his strong push for
attacking Iraq. Many mentioned that they were baffled by the total lack of
effort by the US government to pursue peace through international
cooperation.
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Yujin Yaguchi is associate professor of American Studies in the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo. His
publications include ‘American Objects, Japanese Memory’,
Winterthur Portfolio 37 (2002) and (with Mari Yoshihara) ‘Evolutions of “Paradise”: Japanese Tourist Discourse about Hawai`i’,
Journal of American Studies 45 (2005). Address: Department of Area
Studies, University of Tokyo, 3–8–1 Komaba Meguro-ku Tokyo,
Japan. [email: [email protected]]