Having gone through the Japanese educational system from kindergarten through junior college, and with some work experience under my belt in a Japanese company, in 1971, I began working for my first American boss, Bernard Krisher. Bernie was the Bureau Chief of Newsweek Tokyo Bureau. As mentioned in my June blog post, around that time, at age 22, the future trajectory of my life was starting to take shape – if I were to have stayed the course in Japan and/or with Newsweek, that is.
Between 1971 and 1972, when I met and chose to marry my husband of 42 years, David Glenn McKendry, nothing else in life seemed as important. My friends and family were happy for me. The one person who vigorously objected to our marriage was Bernie.
At the time, I did not know Bernie’s background or his passion. I only knew him as my boss. Time heals almost everything. It was a pleasant surprise to see his name toward the end of Bix’s book, “Hirohito.” He was the brave reporter who asked the emperor some of the most crucial questions about his role in World War II; the type of questions to which most people who seek the truth about history would want to find out the answers directly from the man; the type of questions that most Japanese would never dare ask – especially of the emperor himself or even of the current emperor, Akihito, Hirohito’s son, because, if you did, it is almost a guarantee that Japanese “society” would make your life miserable. Chances are that they would label you as whatever derogatory terms they can muster to ruin your life.
With all due respect, as best as I can tell, the current emperor of Japan is also in complete denial of his father’s sins against humanity – just as much as the majority of the rest of the Japanese society. Bernie was able to “get away with” daring to ask the taboo questions. Why? It is because he was part of a major media organization of the post-WWII victor, the U.S., which played the leading role in Japan as part of the Allied Powers. Hirohito’s answers to Bernie, however, were reflected in the earlier parts of Bix’s book. It was the same-old fiction that the emperor had always wanted everyone to believe – which I, too, believed until it was revealed otherwise in his book.
I understand that General Douglas MacArthur wanted to completely avoid indicting Hirohito as a war criminal. Having finished reading Bix’s book, what I still don’t fully understand is why not. Why would the Unite States allow such blatant injustice and enable a war criminal to live without the consequence of his sins? What was in it for the U.S.? We will never know how Japanese society might have turned out if the emperor were tried, found guilty (which the book left little room for anyone to doubt) and hanged.
After the war, it is commonly accepted that the United States – representing the Allied Powers – brought to Japan food, peace, and democracy. The first two are true. Unlike the United States of America, however, the Japan in which I grew up was not at all a democratic society. It did not value individual freedom or freedom of speech. The status of women in the society continued to lag behind that of the western world by at least several decades. Bix’s book opened my eyes as to why this remained the case. By the simple fact of the emperor having been allowed to remain the “symbol” of Japan by the Allied Powers guaranteed that, hierarchically, the imperial family continued to remain at the top of the society. It is not by accident, therefore, that “democracy” in Japan is nothing like the true democracy as we know it in the United States.
I chose to take a different path than what Bernie thought was best for me. I was driven to remove myself from Japanese society, which was bound by tradition and hierarchy. I wanted to immerse myself in a society which believed in individual freedom and independence, a society which was kind to humanity. I have since been able to see the world – and the country of my origin – in a completely different light. Over four decades later, I have no regret about the choices I have made.
I have no doubt I would have been pleased with my life’s trajectory under Bernie’s guidance. It was almost a given that I would have continued to be introduced to many interesting people – movers and shakers – from around the world. As it turns out, Bernie himself was one of the most fascinating individuals I have ever met. His quiet contributions to humanity are beyond measure. I am humbled and proud to have had the opportunity to work for him.
