Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms
- Introduction
- 1 In the shadow of Hiroshima: the United States and Asia in the aftermath of Japanese defeat
- 2 The Korean War, the atomic bomb and Asian–American estrangement
- 3 Securing the East Asian frontier: stalemate in Korea and the Japanese peace treaty
- 4 A greater sanction: the defence of South East Asia, the advent of the Eisenhower administration and the end of the Korean War
- 5 ‘Atomic Madness’: massive retaliation and the Bravo test
- 6 The aftermath of Bravo, the Indochina crisis and the emergence of SEATO
- 7 ‘Asia for the Asians’: the first offshore islands crisis and the Bandung Conference
- 8 A nuclear strategy for SEATO and the problem of limited war in the Far East
- 9 Massive retaliation at bay: US–Japanese relations, nuclear deployment and the limited war debate
- 10 The second offshore islands crisis and the advent of flexible response
- 11 The Chinese bomb, American nuclear strategy in Asia and the escalation of the Vietnam War
- Conclusion: from massive retaliation to flexible response in Asia
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Massive retaliation at bay: US–Japanese relations, nuclear deployment and the limited war debate
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms
- Introduction
- 1 In the shadow of Hiroshima: the United States and Asia in the aftermath of Japanese defeat
- 2 The Korean War, the atomic bomb and Asian–American estrangement
- 3 Securing the East Asian frontier: stalemate in Korea and the Japanese peace treaty
- 4 A greater sanction: the defence of South East Asia, the advent of the Eisenhower administration and the end of the Korean War
- 5 ‘Atomic Madness’: massive retaliation and the Bravo test
- 6 The aftermath of Bravo, the Indochina crisis and the emergence of SEATO
- 7 ‘Asia for the Asians’: the first offshore islands crisis and the Bandung Conference
- 8 A nuclear strategy for SEATO and the problem of limited war in the Far East
- 9 Massive retaliation at bay: US–Japanese relations, nuclear deployment and the limited war debate
- 10 The second offshore islands crisis and the advent of flexible response
- 11 The Chinese bomb, American nuclear strategy in Asia and the escalation of the Vietnam War
- Conclusion: from massive retaliation to flexible response in Asia
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the previous chapter we saw how tensions began to develop between the Pentagon, in its desire to implement at a planning and deployment level in the Far East the reliance on nuclear weapons that underpinned the New Look, and the State Department which was anxious over how this would be received by Asian non-aligned states. But for US policy-makers it was in Japan, in the aftermath of the Lucky Dragon incident of 1954, that the most worrying trends in popular opinion towards nuclear weapons were encountered, and where the American stake in the outcome was highest. Alongside concerns over the state of public opinion were several unwelcome developments in the domestic political scene. Though Washington was happy to see a merger take place in November 1955 between the two main conservative parties in Japan to form the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and so thus instigating a system that would dominate government in Tokyo for the next forty years, much to the discomfort of the State Department, Hatoyama's administration was still determined to improve relations with the Communist bloc. Despite being diverted from making firm overtures to Beijing by signs of strong American displeasure, Japanese initiatives finally bore fruit when Hatoyama visited Moscow in October 1956 to sign an agreement which normalized relations with the Soviet Union and cleared the way for Japan's admission to the UN, giving Tokyo's foreign policy an increasingly independent tenor.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- After HiroshimaThe United States, Race and Nuclear Weapons in Asia, 1945–1965, pp. 318 - 361Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010