West Across the Pacific: American Involvement in East Asia from 1 ...

The overseas Japanese community in Hawaii plays a special role in our story. Interested and concerned observers of the rising Japanese-American antagonism, their ambivalent position rendered them particularly vulnerable in the clash to come. Did they feel any responsibility or take any action to avert the debacle of war, those hundred thousand potential ambassadors of good will? Positioned to enhance relations between their home and adopted countries, they might have done much. Why didn’t or couldn’t they do more? The author had access to the Archives of Hawaii and collections at the University of Hawaii and found interesting information on this point. His former student, John Stephan, has done a fine study of the problem in Hawaii Under the Rising Sun (1984).

And what about the British position? Neutral but friendly (to both the United States and Japan) best characterizes the British position through much of the story, particularly during the era of the Anglo-Japanese alliance and its afterglow in the late 1920s and early ’30s. Therefore, we would expect to find the observations of British agents particularly critical in the constructive sense. Also, fortunately, we have the entirely neutral record of France’s ambassador to Tokyo, M. A. Gerard, during seven important years from 1907 to 1914 when Japanese and American voices had become shrill enough to produce the earliest war scares, published with an epilogue on events to 1919. George Lensen used Russian archives, a great help to the author. Such neutral material provides an element of ballast to compensate for our reliance mainly on Japanese and American documents.

Finally, I send a word of appreciation to those whose assistance made the study possible: to the University of Pennsylvania for a faculty research grant enabling the author to visit archives and libraries in England, to the East-West Center in Honolulu for the use of its excellent facilities and research support as a senior specialist, and to the American Philosophical Society for a special grant to Japan enabling him to launch the project. In addition to those just named, the author owes special thanks to Minoru Shinoda, former executive director of the Institute for Advanced Projects, and others at the East-West Center. Members of the faculty of the University of Hawaii also were most cooperative, among whom special thanks are due: professors John Albert White, Shunzo Sakamaki, George Akita, and Ronald Anderson.