and U.S. Militarism

To examine the ways by which the 3.11 disasters have served as an opportunity for Japan and the United States to further their transpacific militarist agenda, it is necessary to inquire into the discourses surrounding Operation Tomodachi, a rescue operation launched in response to the disasters and named after the Japanese word for “friend.” According to one U.S. Congressional Research Service Report, at the peak of Operation Tomodachi, the U.S.

Department of Defense mobilized approximately 24,000 U.S. military personnel, 189 aircraft, and 24 navy vessels stationed in Japan and throughout Asia and the Pacific to cooperate with Japan’s Self Defense Force to search for victims, deliver relief supplies, clear debris, and restore critical infrastructures in disaster-affected areas (Feickert and Chanlett-Avery 1).

Labelled as “the single largest humanitarian relief effort in American history” (Biden), Operation Tomodachi was greatly appreciated by the Japanese government for its life-saving contributions. Japan’s then Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa, for example, remarked that

“[t]he entire Japanese people are deeply moved and encouraged by scenes of U.S. military members working hard in support of relief efforts” (Daniel). Then Prime Minister Naoto Kan also argued that many Japanese, including himself, “were enormously encouraged” by then U.S. President Barack Obama’s affirmative remarks that the relationship between the United States and Japan is “unshakeable” in times of crisis. Sharing similar themes and narrative tactics, these official narratives have not only helped cultivate pro-American sentiments among Japanese citizens in the immediate aftermath of the triple disasters.⁵ More importantly, they have also set up the discursive frames delimiting the possible ways of retelling and making sense of the massive military assistance that the United States has offered to Japan.

Various scholars from Japan and elsewhere have raised critical concerns over the discursive limits governing how memories and meanings about Operation Tomodachi have

5 See Samuels; and Kersten.

been produced and circulated. For instance, Asaho Mizushima argues that the “emotional episodes” and “heartwarming stor[ies]” about U.S. military relief efforts have generated feelings of gratitude among Japanese, making them hesitant to discuss the assistance they received “from the view of global political dynamics.” In particular, what remained to be openly discussed, Mizushima observes, was how the United States has used Operation Tomodachi as an opportunity to strengthen its military ties with Japan, regardless of the lingering controversies over its extensive military presence in Okinawa, Japan’s

southernmost territory where most of the U.S. military facilities in Japan are located.⁶ Along a similar vein, Annie Isabel Fukushima et al. have pointed out that U.S. disaster relief

missions such as Operation Tomodachi have “showcased the U.S. military’s ‘helpfulness,’

legitimized its presence and softened its image.” In turn, these imaginings portraying the U.S. military as friendly and helpful have constituted the rise of what might be called

“disaster militarism”—“a pattern of rhetoric, beliefs and practices [that] the military should be the primary responder to large-scale disaster.” According to this logic of “disaster militarism,” the United States is able to justify the necessity to preserve or even expand its current military infrastructure stretching across Asia and the Pacific, given the fact that its troops have been the “first and fastest” to contain disastrous consequences of natural calamities (Fukushima et al.).

The vast overseas U.S. military installations and bases hosted by the United States’

allied countries such as Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, and by its incorporated and unincorporated territories such as Hawai‘i and Guam have helped shape what Chalmers

6 Mizushima argues that controversies surrounding U.S. militarization in Okinawa have at times destabilized the bilateral military alliance between the United States and Japan prior to March 11, 2011. He observes that after Kevin Maher, then director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Japan Affairs, disparaged Okinawan residents who have been subsidized by the Japanese government for the military use of their land as “masters of manipulation and extortion” (qtd. in Mizushima), the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly demanded an apology from the United States on March 8, 2011. By drawing attention to this diplomatic incident, Mizushima seeks to explain that the United States’ timely mobilization of military troops and facilities to help the disaster-stricken people of Japan during Operation Tomodachi helped to shift public perceptions about the massive U.S. military presence in Okinawa.

Johnson has called the U.S. “empire of bases” (23). Within the reach of this empire, conflicts or natural calamities can be quickly contained and managed. Operation Tomodachi in fact has only been one of the many disaster relief operations that have provided the United States with opportunities to showcase its military’s friendliness and helpfulness. Among other disasters that the U.S. military was involved include, to name but a few, the Indonesia earthquake response in 2006, the Solomon Islands tsunami response in 2007, and the Kumamoto earthquake relief response in Japan in 2016.⁷ Although as Fukushima et al.

observe, disaster relief is by no means the primary function of the U.S. military, the justificatory logic of “disaster militarism” has proven useful for the United States to normalize its massive military presence in Asia and the Pacific.

U.S. overseas military bases, as Catherine Lutz observes, are “the literal and symbolic anchors, and the most visible centerpieces of the U.S. military presence overseas” (24).

Nevertheless, their lethal functions to kill and wage wars are oftentimes obscured by the logic of “disaster militarism,” or what I would suggest, discourses of “hope” that highlight the life-saving capacities of the U.S. military. Building on the discursive tradition that portrays U.S. overseas military bases as sites of rescue and protection rather than that of destruction, Hillary Clinton, then U.S. Secretary of State, called for a further expansion of the existing U.S. military structure in Asia and the Pacific in her now-famous 2011 article,

“America’s Pacific Century.” When justifying the necessity for the United States to “pivot”

its military assets from Iraq and Afghanistan to Asia and the Pacific, Clinton argued that

“Asia’s remarkable economic growth over the past decade and its potential for continued growth in the future depend on the security and stability that has long been guaranteed by the U.S. military, including more than 50,000 American servicemen and servicewomen serving in Japan and South Korea.” Securing prospects for economic development,

7 For critical concern over the U.S. and Japanese governments’ military appropriations of the Kumamoto earthquake that struck southern Japan on April 16, 2016, see Nikaido.

however, was not the only goal that motivated the United States to further its military presence in the region. Added to the list of reasons that support the U.S. military “pivot”

were the militarized promises of “hope”—manifested in the form of regional security and life sustenance—that the United States has sought to offer to the peoples of Asia and the Pacific. As Clinton observed, the “challenges” facing the “rapidly changing region” of Asia and the Pacific—“from territorial and maritime disputes to new threats of freedom of navigation to the heightened impact of natural disasters—require that the United States pursue a more geographically distributed, operationally resilient, and politically sustainable force posture.” While Clinton’s article attempted to highlight the U.S. military’s capacity to not only save lives but also secure regional stability and promote economic growth in Asia and the Pacific, what it failed to mention is a long history of crimes and civilian assaults involving rapes, abductions, accidents, and environmental contamination perpetuated by the U.S. troops against the diverse population of peoples living in close proximity to the United States’ overseas military bases.⁸