Tokyo looks to New York City

This past week shock and sadness was felt across Japan, but perhaps most keenly here in Tokyo, a city that in many ways feels joined at the hip to New York City. At the front gates of the U. S. Embassy in Tokyo, a steady stream of mourners continue to place bouquets of flowers in memory of the American lives lost in the attacks. The Japanese, too, grieve for the two Japanese passengers aboard the doomed airplanes, and for the 22 Japanese who are still missing in the wreckage of the World Trade Center buildings.

Telephone lines were jammed as many American ex-pats called home to speak with family or to check on the safety of friends in New York City. Tokyo stayed awake through the night watching the news coverage until the scenes of those two airliners slicing into the twin towers were indelibly scarred in our collective memory.

Japanese and non-Japanese reacted in much the same way: disbelief, horror, shock, and the stunned, futile hope that what we were watching was not real.

In the first few hours following those horrific events, several American journalists compared the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington to the Japanese "sneak" attack at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese reaction to this comparison depended on age. My barber, a woman in her mid-forties, said that yes, the attack was similar because of the "Tenno heika! Bonzai!" (Long Live the Emperor!) spirit of the airliner suicide pilots and because the attacks had been a complete surprise. Outside the barber shop, I spoke with three college students, young men sitting in front of a karaoke parlor. "Pearl Harbor?" They thought for a moment or two, then replied, that yeah, it was a surprise attack, so yeah, it was similar sort of.

But a college professor disagreed with the comparison. This man had vivid childhood memories of the day Japan entered WWII, and memories of the fire bombings of Tokyo on March 9th, 1945. That carpet bombing, he said, was the largest incendiary attack ever conceived, larger than any bombing of any European city. Between 150,000 and 234,000 Tokyo residents died in one night. The professor's relatives had perished in the Tokyo fires, while his uncle had been a naval officer on the Akagi, the flagship aircraft carrier of the Pearl Harbor attack. The professor said those two tragic events -- the terrorist attacks and Pearl Harbor -- were in no way the same, and that the Japanese had not been terrorists. But, he conceded, that both were surprise attacks on United States soil did give the two events a surface similarity. Japanese, he said, want New Yorkers to know that they are allies in this fight against terrorism.

By a strange twist of fate, the Akagi was completed at the Yokosuka shipyards, which is now home of the U.S. Yokosuka Naval Base. The base stands at the highest state of alert with the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier ready to sail off to war.

By now, the Pearl Harbor comparison has been mostly forgotten. It was not taken up on Japanese news shows or in other media. Japanese understand the pain and the suffering and the shock that prompted such a comment. Today, Japanese are still laying flowers at the front gates of the Embassy in Tokyo; while in New York City, families and relatives of those Japanese still missing are visiting hospitals and relief centers hoping for any word or bit of good news.

Words do not come easily or clearly to convey the sadness that Tokyo residents feel. Tokyo, London, Paris, or any city could be the next terrorist target, but the excitement and energy and joy of life in a big city must go on. New York City has shown extraordinary courage, bravery and backbone -- an example for all cities to follow.

--Michael Kleindl