Plantaagenet,
Continued from above. I have been gagged not to speak for a while by Forum Rules.

The following is, unless specified otherwise, from Edwin O. Reiscahuer/The Japanese, Chapter34 Neutrality or Alignment, Charles E. Tuttle, 1978. The book is old but may give you a feel of war and peace in Japan, which was the central theme, deeply devided, in post-war politics.

"...As a result, ever since the end of the war peace has been the key concept in the minds of most Japanese. Their pacifism is deep and sincere, being supported by both emotion and rationality...
No one doubted that Japan should stay out of any sort of war and seek to avoid involvement in international disputes as much as possibe...adopting a "low posture," as the Japanese described it, and concentrating on Japan's economic recovery...But beyond this a deep controversy arose over whether Japan should seek its own security through close alignment with the United States or should cut itself free and maintain strict neutrality in world affairs. As we have seen, this became the largest issue in Japanese politics for the next two decades.
The issue was forced on the Japanese by the United States when it decided to go ahead with a separate (San Francisco) peace treaty with Japan in 1951, without the participation of the Soviet Union or China." The conservatives generally thought a separate treaty was inevitable under the prevailing international circumstances, but mass mediea and academia and socialits were generally very strongly opposed and demanded a treay which included the communist blocks.
"Even the more moderate Socialits accepted the necessity of a "separate peace treaty" and split with the left wing over this issue. The remainder of the opposition groups, however, were bitterly opposed.

Plantagenet,
"In their eyes the American had shifte from liberators to enemies by stopping further reforms in Japan in their wish to foster economic recovery and a stronger position in the cold war and had thus ruled out the possibility of socializing the Japanese economy. Their sympathies lay more with the Communist nations, which they felt were the real peace camp," resisting the capitalist aggressors. They felt that the Security Treaty (with the United States) and the American bases it permitted endangered Japan rather than giving it security, for these bases, they feared, would inevitably involve Japan in America's war and would serve as a magnet drawing retaliation from the other side. The Security Treaty and the bases, they also felt, trampled on Japan's constitutional renunciation of war, in which most Japanese took pride, and on their ardent desire to remain neutral in international conflicts.
Such attitudes had great popular appeal and were shared at least in part by many supporters of the conservative parties. While the economic record of the Lieberal Democratic party was to prove its chief strength, its foreign policy of alignment with the United States always remained its greatest weakness."

"The opposition parties in Japan from the start bitterly opposed the creation of the Self-Defense Forces, fearing a restoration of prewar militarism and pointing out that they clearly transgressed the constitution...Unarmed neutrality was always a slogan of the (Japanese) Socialists, though the (Japanese) Communists more realistically believed in national military power, so long as it was under their own control..."

"This move (the Sino-American rapprochement) opened the way for the Japanese government to set at rest one of the hottest and more divisive of all domestic political issues－namely, Japan's relations with China."

Prime Minister Murayama, known for his "sincere apology," was a socialit belonging to a very radical group of the Japan Socialit Party. The group, for instance, used to have a better liking to North Korea than to South Korea.

I am thinking of writing a little bit more later. Thank you.

Hi Michi

My main concern is to point out that each August selective anti-US activist (claiming to be scholars) decide that we all should remember Hiroshima in isolation from almost everything else. The selectives also point out the alleged sins of US decision-making but no actions of Japan prior to about 1944.

The selectives with their "nuclear war should never have again" slogan link it directly with alleged sins of the US. They are not Japanese but from English speaking countries. The leftists have an agenda of hurting their parents and other authority figures.

I suspect the selectives wilfully disregard the sins of Japan or are plain ignorant.

In Forrest Gump's immortal words:

"Stupid is as stupid does."

Pete

Plantagenet and everyone,
From above.
Socialists regarded themselves in spite of their leaning toward China, as the guardians of peace, freedom, freedom of speech, human rights and democracy in Japan. They were not anti-Americans; they were anti-conservatives or anti-pro-Americans as a former Japanese ambassador to America remarked. Sometimes it was found that they had sent a son or a daughter to an American high school or university and they were proud of it.
Concervatives were generally not anti-Chinese in spite of their option for an alliance with the United States.

People abroad have a mistaken idea from the Japanese aggression of China about the Japanese love of China that historically prevailed in Japan. To read the next passage will make you feel suspicious but it is true; "...the Chinese have never reciprocated the warm feelings of the Japanese, viewing them with distrust and more than a little contempt. The Japanese nostalgia for China has been a classic case of unrequited love (Reischauer, The Japanese, p417.)"

Two things shocked the Chinese diplomatic circle most in the twentieth century. One was the fact that the Japanese sat on the victors' side of the peace conference table in 1901 along with the white nations after the Boxers' rebellion, a status that China had never allowed and will never grant. The other was the fact that Japan had a permanet seat in a security council of the League of Nations. The Sino-Japanese relations, past, present and future, will never be understood without understanding the adoration on one part and the profound contempt on the other.

Plantagentet,
The annual gathering in Hiroshima on Aug. 6 is to pray for the victims and that never in any place in the world shall a nuclear bomb be used. They also pray for the total abolition of nuclear weapons of any and every country. It is neither an anti-American rally. Ambassador Kennedy and a high-ranking official from the US State Department were present this year. It is not the place to think back of Japan's war guilt, either.

About German repentance and Japanese unrepentance.

Chancellor Adenauer of West Germany said, "If Mr. Khrushchev should praise me, I will look back and think what wrong I have done." Khrushchev did not talk back and say anything like "The Germans have not repented." No Japanese prime ministers said anything like that.
Post-war Japan had been filled with a sense of guilt. "...Japanese ever since the war have felt a sense of guilt toward Chinese for having despoiled their country and a feeling that somehow Japan must make amendes to China for the transgressions of the past (Reischauer, ibid. p417.)"

Hitler invaded Eastern Europe and Russia. Japan wanted to get out of its prolonged and emaciating war with China, which had lasted over four years at the time of December 1941, and avoid war with the United States. I would like anyone to read my (Yoshimichi Moriyama's) five comments on Alistair Burnett/War Drums in Asia: Back to European Future?.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/war-drums-asia-back-to-european-future.

Japan had proposed and, its proposal accepted, entered into negotiations with the United States in Washington. The United States was rather provocative in the last few months and wanted Japan to fire a first shot. (I do not intend to mean by this that the United States was therefore 100% wrong.) On November 26, Secretary Hull of Department of State gave a note to two Japanese ambassadors. They knew that Japan would most probably respond by military means. The next morning, Hull said, "I have washed my hands of it, and it is in the hands of you (Stimson) and Knox, the Army and Navy."
The so-called Hull Note shocked the Japanese government and they decided to go to war on December 1 (Japan Standard Time), because it was a total negation of what the two countries had been discussing.

The Japanese ambassadors were instructed to hand the last note to Secretary Hull at 1 p.m. This note had been divided in fourteen parts and each part was sent, and as the code had been broken since October 1940, President Roosevelt, Secretary Hull and some others had read it

Continued from above.
They had read it except the fourteenth part, and so knew what the ambassadors were bringing to them.

The ambassadors were instructed to hand the note from Japan to Secretary Hull at 1 p.m. They had not been told what was going to happen at Pearl Harbor. The typing could not be left for the Americans working in the embassy and the Japanese did it, taking a longer time.
So the Japanese asked the United States to put off the appointment by an hour. The ambassadors met with Secretary Hull at 2:20 p.m. They knew when they came back to the embassy what had happened at Pearl Harbor and were flabbergasted.

One fourth of West Germans were pro-Western at the time of Adenauer; they did not mind allignment or friendly ties with the West. Three fourths liked independence, going on their own way.
The United States and other Western countries found themselves being faced with the Soviets' enormous military power. In addition, Adenauer was anti-Nazi but a formidably proud statesman. The West wanted to enlist West Germany on their side by all means; they could not afford to bother themselves with the question of German repentance or unrepentance or the question of the German past and guilt. As I once happened to read, General Eisenhower had to take back, in winning the Republican nomination for the presidential race, the harsh disparaging remarks he had made about Germany and the role that the Wehrmacht played in Hitler's war.
Of course four fourth, namely virtually all, were anti-Russian. And all of them, including the three fourth, independant, proud and "Deutschland-uber-Alles-in-der-Welt" Germans had to make compromises with the reality.

Perhaps no Germans would be alive today who lived in both the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. When many were still living, an astoundingly large number of them answered they liked the Nazi Germany's time and loathed the Weimar Republic days. (I would like to continue a little bit.)