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relations between two aroused and deeply concerned peoples. Unless the American and Japanese voters permit a tolerant attitude in the relations between the two nations, the official representatives of both sides will not be in a position to work out the necessary compromises between our differing emphases, and our desires for mutually beneficial cooperation on major problems may be nullified by brittle inflexibility on details.
As almost everywhere else in the world, there is a pressing need on both sides of the Pacific for a clearer comprehension of the fundamental issues on which we and the Japanese are in agreement and for a more sympathetic understanding of our points of difference. The American public must have a more tolerant appreciation of why the Japanese think differently, and conversely, though this is usually overlooked, the Japanese public needs to have an equal realization of why reasonable Americans do not necessarily see things in the same way as reasonable Japanese.
This need for tolerant understanding of our differing views on economic and military problems suggests that perhaps the most crucial area of American-Japanese relations is to be found in still a third field—the intellectual. This is not an area of existing problems so much as one still to be explored. So little has been attempted that the possibilities of this field, and perhaps its dangers, cannot as yet be mapped even in roughest outline. But it is a field which will need rapid exploration and successful development if the more pressing problems of economy and defense are to be overcome satisfactorily, so that there can be a fruitful cooperation between the United States and Japan on those major objectives and interests which they share in common.
October 24, 1952
