In December 1941, during the Second World War,
the U.S.A.’s top naval base, Pearl Harbour, on the
Pacific island of Hawaii, was attacked without prior
warning by the Japanese. So severe was the
bombardment that, of the hundred odd naval
vessels anchored there, only a handful survived.
This had the immediate effect of bringing America
into the war as one of the Allied Powers. Up till that
point, the U.S.A. had had no direct involvement in
hostilities save as a supplier of armaments to the
enemies of Japan. The Japanese attack had been
uncalled-for and ill-considered, but they did not
realize the magnitude of their error until 1945, when
America finally took its revenge by dropping the
first ever atom bombs on two of Japan’s major
industrial centres, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thus
annihilating Japan as a military power. The
Americans then kept a tight military and political
hold over Japan. But the latter country,
astonishingly, recuperated from the horror of largescale
atomic devastation, and proceeded to adapt
itself to an entirely new set of circumstances. Before
the Second World War, it had relied on the power
of weapons. But after witnessing the destruction
they caused, it relinquished their use and set about
reconstructing the country along entirely peaceful
lines. Having once adopted this course, the
Japanese showed great versatility resilience and
assiduity and their success has been such that Japan
is now considered the second greatest industrial
power in the entire world today. Its trade surplus is
37 billion dollars, more even than that of the U.S.A.
In the field of industry the victors have been
defeated by the vanquished. Simply by accepting
the fact that aggression could not pay dividends
and then channelizing its potential within the field
of industry, Japan has managed quite miraculously
to supersede all the other nations of the world.
The Americans are greatly upset at this state of
affairs and refer to the present ‘invasion’ of
Japanese goods as an Economic Pearl Harbour. A
book recently published in America, under the title
of “Japan-Number One”, has become a best-seller. It
clearly shows that Japan has far outrun the U.S.A.
in business and will soon supersede Britain. So far
as foreign exchange is concerned, Japan is the
wealthiest country in the world, its foreign
exchange reserves totalling 74 billion dollars in
1984. (The Times of India, 13-14 June 1985).
How did Japan turn its military defeat into an
economic victory? By encouraging patience and
perseverance and avoiding provocation, it
concentrated its energies on peaceful (and, of
course, remunerative) fields, rather than indulge in
retaliatory violence. It initially accepted the military
and political supremacy of other nations, quickly
adapting itself to new scales of values, then set
about the economic rehabilitation of the country
without wasting a single moment on bewailing lost
opportunities, blaming others for its misfortunes or
on pointless nostalgia. Rather than make further
mistakes—Pearl Harbour having been the worst—it
concentrated all of its attention on seizing existing
opportunities. In short, Japan accepted the blame
for its own destruction, and, once having done so,
was able seriously to launch itself on its own
economic uplift.
We must never lose sight of the fact that we are not
lone travellers on this earth. There are always others
who are trying to race ahead of us in this world of
competition. The resulting situation can be
approached in two entirely different ways. One is to
collide with anything which obstructs our path. The
other is to circumvent obstacles and then to go on
our way. Clearly, the first is self-destructive, while
the second, in avoiding confrontations, is much
more likely to prove advantageous. A ship which
sails straight at a rock or an iceberg is doomed to
disaster. It is the ship which veers temporarily off
its course to avoid the reefs which will eventually
sail safely into harbour. Similarly, Japan, by giving
up ideas of military supremacy, has reached a much
more worthwhile objective—economic supremacy.
It is worth remembering that Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, once Symbols of Japan’s total
annihilation as a military power, are now symbols,
forty years later, of Japan’s stunning economic
success.
Ref - The Moral Vision
- by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
