A Reflection on History at the Funeral of Mr. James E. Auer
From the regular column by Yoshihisa Komori in today’s Sankei Shimbun — A must-read not only for the Japanese people but for the entire world.
I participated in the ceremony to lay the ashes of James E. Auer—former Director of Japan Affairs at the U.S. Department of Defense—to rest in the sea off Japan. The event not only recalled his contributions to the U.S.-Japan alliance, but also reminded me of the truth that history repeats itself.
This joint U.S.-Japan funeral was held on July 12 aboard the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force's minesweeper tender Bungo, off the coast of Maizuru. It fulfilled Mr. Auer’s personal wish to have his remains laid to rest in Japanese waters.
When I first came to know Mr. Auer in 1979, he was serving as Director of Japan Affairs at the Pentagon under the Carter administration.
Immediately after the new year, the U.S. government made a drastic shift in its long-standing defense policy and began openly demanding a substantial increase in Japan’s defense budget.
These demands were far more forceful than the relatively moderate expectations seen under the current Trump administration.
However, what remained consistent was that Japan’s defense spending had become a central issue of concern in American national policy.
President Jimmy Carter, a liberal Democrat, adopted an extremely conciliatory and pacifist foreign policy stance, partly as a reaction to the trauma of the Vietnam War.
In particular, he displayed a posture toward the Soviet Union—then expanding its global reach—that could even be described as one of cooperation and goodwill.
But the Soviet Union, instead of reciprocating, interpreted this attitude as weakness and began expanding communist influence in various countries.
The ultimate expression of this expansionism came at the end of 1979, when the Soviet Union launched a full-scale military invasion of Afghanistan.
President Carter later publicly acknowledged that he had misjudged the Soviet Union and shifted toward strengthening Western defense.
As a result, the U.S. government issued an official statement requesting “steady and significant increases” in Japan’s defense budget.
This was a complete reversal of Carter’s own position from just a few months earlier, when he had said Japan’s policy of keeping defense spending below 1% of GNP posed no problem for the United States.
However, the Japanese government at the time did not respond to this demand for a major increase.
It was still an era deeply entrenched in nonresistant pacifism, where “strengthening defense leads to war.”
In response to Japan’s 1980 defense budget, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown issued a strongly worded protest, calling it “an unjustifiable act of self-satisfaction.”
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers in both houses of Congress, along with major newspaper editorials, went so far as to accuse Japan of “free riding.”
This U.S. frustration only deepened with the inauguration of the conservative Republican Reagan administration in 1981.
Yet the core philosophy—even under Carter—was the idea that “military buildup deters war.”
The key figure working within the U.S. government to bridge the gap in understanding between the two nations was none other than Mr. Auer.
With strong support from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger—his direct superior under Reagan—Mr. Auer leveraged his longstanding ties with Japanese bureaucrats, politicians, and the media to explain America’s strategic thinking and the reality of the Soviet military threat.
At the same time, he also worked energetically to educate and correct the crude anti-Japanese rhetoric coming from some voices within the United States.
His efforts contributed significantly to the close era of defense cooperation between the Reagan and Nakasone administrations.
That, in turn, led to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Communist regime—a historic development.
Therefore, the international significance of the U.S.-Japan defense cooperation in which Mr. Auer played such a vital role continues to resonate even today.
When we look back on these events, recent Japanese statements like “Japan will decide its own defense budget” or “Don’t underestimate us, America” strike me as highly inappropriate.
—Washington-based Guest Correspondent
