Black Ships to Little Boy / MSSU Japan Semester Lecture

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In his speech given to Congress on Dec. 8, 1941, American President Franklin Roosevelt would famously call the previous day’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor “a day that will live in infamy.” Yet, to anyone aware of the past century of interactions between the Eagle and the Sun, the air raid and subsequent conflict were anything but a surprise. Beginning with the arrival of Commodore Perry’s flotilla in Edo Bay in 1853, this presentation traces the history of American-Japanese relations during the 92-year period between the appearance of the Black Ships and the dropping of Little Boy on Hiroshima. This presentation seeks to frame the coming of the Pacific War against the backdrop of nearly a century of often contentious diplomacy between Japan and the United States, with factors as myriad as geopolitical conflicts in China, struggles over racial equality, and the pervasive ideology of Social Darwinism ultimately driving the two countries to blows in 1941.