NEW YORK — A young friend of mine, Rie Nakano, who did some archival research for a university professor, has given me a small batch of documents prepared by the Special Higher Police, known by the Japanese acronym Tokko. (I had told Rie that my father was an officer of the dreaded "thought police.")
The documents she passed to me consist of three parts, two of them related to the early phase of Japan's improbable war with the United States. Reading them, I thought of the just-departed U.S. president, George W. Bush, and his Iraq war. There was initial enthusiasm, followed by disappointments not long afterward.
In the standard narrative, most Japanese reacted to Japan's going to war against the U.S with jubilation. Pent-up resentment was building over the one-sided demands the U.S. had made on Japan with regard to China (Bush's peremptory demands on Saddam Hussein had ample precedent). So the news of Japan's successful assault on Pearl Harbor was cathartic.