Reckoning

by David Halberstam

  There were two real weaknesses, however. One was the public school system and the low level of literacy. (A recent study said in its conclusion that if a foreign power had wanted to undermine the United States of America, it would have given it the public school system it currently had.) Even here, the drive and energy and ambition of the new Asians was apparent. Whereas the top graduates at the Bronx High School of Science, one of New York City’s great democratic yet elite high schools, where admission was based on merit, had some twenty-five or thirty years ago been the children of Jewish immigrants, now they were the children of Asian immigrants, often in fact young Asians themselves born in the old country. There was something about that fact that spoke of both the best and the worst of modern America, for it showed simultaneously that it was an open and regenerative nation, where a better life was still possible, and that all too many native sons and daughters had taken their standard of living for granted.

  The other respect in which America was ill prepared for the new world economy was in terms of expectations. No country, including America, was likely ever to be as rich as America had been from 1945 to 1975, and other nations were following the Japanese into middle-class existence, which meant that life for most Americans was bound to become leaner. But in the middle of 1986 there seemed little awareness of this, let alone concern about it. Few were discussing how best to adjust the nation to an age of somewhat diminished expectations, or how to marshal its abundant resources for survival in a harsh, unforgiving new world, or how to spread the inevitable sacrifices equitably.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I DECIDED TO DO this book in the spring of 1980. In the wake of the fall of the Shah of Iran it was clear that the entire American industrial core was vulnerable to relentless challenge from a confident, disciplined Japan. How and why that had happened seemed to me a story worth telling. While there were a number of experts on both sides of the Pacific, it struck me that there was no book that tried to tell the parallel stories of the Japanese ascent and the American malaise, and that it was a perfect opportunity for a writer willing to spend the five years or so it would take to report the critical events closely. The story was what I would call soft drama—that is, something profound that has taken place so quietly, in such small increments, that it is barely visible to the naked eye—as opposed to hard drama, something so obviously dramatic that it is on the network news that very evening or on the front page the next morning. In any case, the story of Japan’s ascent and America’s subtle industrial decline seemed to me drama of the highest order and consequence. I chose the auto rather than steel because it was a consumer item, familiar to every reader, and the symbol of America’s surge into the middle class—indeed, to the rest of the world, the most American of products. I decided to tell the story through the personae of two companies. On the American side, I picked Ford because at that moment Chrysler was too fragile, too near bankruptcy, and GM so large and rich as to be impervious to all but the vastest changes. Having selected Ford, the number two American company, I chose Nissan, the number two Japanese firm, after Toyota, as its Japanese counterpart. At that moment I knew precious little about either; I had absolutely no idea, for example, that critical to Nissan’s modern history was the settlement of a hundred-day strike in 1953.

  This book was harder for me to do than The Best and the Brightest and The Powers That Be. Those books were about events that were already part of my life; when during interviews sources told me about important occurrences, I knew immediately what they were talking about, and the context. Here, however, I had to familiarize myself with a completely different and often quite alien world. I was not only reporting, I was learning different languages, those of industry and of auto. As I entered this world, a number of Detroit officials and journalists were generous with their expertise and wisdom. I have listed many of them among my interviews, but I should note that Keith Crain and David E. Davis (each first among equals) were particularly helpful, and I turned to them again and again. I would also like to note that though I covered the men of Ford in what were the company’s most difficult years, they were as a rule gracious and cooperative.

  The Japanese section was harder to do, not because of language problems but because the Japanese have a very different attitude toward divulging what they know. As Frank Gibney, a leading writer on Japan, says, “It takes a very long time to get someone who really knows something to say something that really matters.” Or as the Japanese intellectual Tadao Umesao points out, in terms of communications Japan is like the black hole of the universe: It receives signals, but does not emit them. Tadao also observes that in Japan, the getting of information has a positive social value while the giving of it is considered worthless or even harmful. I spent eight months in Japan, six of them accompanied by my family. Nissan was at best slow to help me. Like many American writers in Japan I felt no overt resistance, just a constant undertow that seemed to work against me. The downside of that problem was a great deal of wasted time; the upside was that it forced me to put even more effort into finding unofficial sources.

  The officials of Mazda, in part because of the far more sophisticated attitude of Bunzo Suzuki (and his greater leverage with his superiors), were far more useful, as were many other Japanese in unofficial positions. A number of American Japanologists were extremely generous in sharing their lifetimes of knowledge with someone new to the subject. I feel especially grateful to Gerry Curtis of Columbia, Ezra Vogel of Harvard, Chalmers Johnson of Berkeley, James Abegglen, Frank Gibney, Donald Richie, and Tracy Dahlby. I am also indebted to my two interpreters, Hideko Takayama and Nobuko Hashimoto. Miss Takayama, dedicated and fearless, was splendid in her ability to keep working at certain loose strands after I left Tokyo and to continue interviewing. Her participation was critical to the completion of my project and my esteem for her knows no limits. She is one of the most talented members of Tokyo’s press corps. She and Miss Hashimoto also did a number of translations for me, most notably the works of Satoshi Aoki and the memoirs of Katsuji Kawamata.

  At the start of the book, Alex Kotlowitz was extremely helpful in compiling a journalistic history of the subject for me; at the end, Roddy Ray of the Detroit Free Press was equally helpful in checking a number of things. Nancy Medeiros typed my notes and was unfailingly positive about one of the hardest aspects of this book. At Ford, Tom Foote was very kind, and at Nissan, Yukihito Eguchi worked diligently at his melancholy task of bringing my requests to his superiors. Baron Bates of Chrysler persevered in helping to arrange interviews for me with his own best-selling boss. David Crippen of the Ford Archives was resourceful and supportive. Marty Lipton of Wachtel, Lipton was invaluable in discussing the changes on Wall Street and suggesting other sources. I would like to thank the on-the-scene reporters of two fine newspapers whose stories from both Tokyo and Detroit were a constant source of information for me when I was on location and, even more valuable, when I was not. Writers like myself often tend to take the work of reporters on the beat for granted; in this case especially that is not acceptable, so I warmly acknowledge my debt to The New York Times’s reporters in Tokyo, Susan Chira, Clyde Haberman, and Henry Scott-Stokes; its Detroit bureau chief, John Holusha; and its labor reporter, Bill Serrin. Also to The Wall Street Journal’s Tokyo reporters, E. S. Browning, Chris Chipello, Masayoshi Kinabayashi, John Marcom, Bradley Martin, Bernard Wysocki, and Stephen Yoder; and the Journal’s staff in Detroit, Amanda Bennett, Dale Buss, John Bussey, Damon Darlin, Melinda Grenier-Guiles, Paul Ingrassia, Doron Levin, Amal Nag, and Bob Simison. I am much obliged to Urban Lehner, who managed to serve as the Journal’s bureau chief in both Tokyo and Detroit during the period when I was working on the book and who is to me the prototype of the complete journalist. The work of Hillel Levin and Kirk Cheyfitz in Detroit’s monthly magazines always seemed to me to be of a very high order, well above that found in many national magazines, and like many another journalistic visitor to that city I found it of great assistance.

&nbs
p; On a more personal level a book like this demands a great deal of logistical support. I would like to express my gratitude to John Murphy, Henry Kehlenbeck, and John McMahon, to Peter Grilli and John Wheeler of the Japan Society, and to Walter Anderson of Parade, whose interest and generosity were vital. My most heartfelt thanks go to Neil Dunlap Hughes, Stevie McCarthy, Amanda Earle, and Carolyn Means (who made the trip to Tokyo with our family). I am indebted to the staffs of the Pontchartrain in Detroit and the International House in Tokyo, and also owe thanks to Dr. Ben Kean, Michael Hecht, Alan Fruchter, and Gary Schwartz.

  My editor at Morrow, Tom Congdon, working under highly pressured circumstances, had from the first day a fine sense of what the book needed and, equally important, what it did not. For more than six difficult months we were not so much writer and editor as partners. I am also grateful to Dawn Drzal, Lori Ames, Sherry Arden, and Larry Hughes.

  With the exception of the portrait of the first Henry Ford, the book is primarily the product of my own research. I post the following list of interviewees with some caveats. First, it is incomplete. At least fifteen critical sources, a few in America and more in Japan, asked that their names not be used, because listing them would make them vulnerable professionally. Second, while a list like this sketches out what a writer has done and where he has gone, it may well be misleading. The name of one well-known source will jump out at readers as someone who helped the writer a great deal, while a less familiar name may have been indispensable. A good example is the late John Bugas. I saw him seven times at great length. No one in the company went as far back with Henry Ford II as he did; few insiders—since Ford had fired him at one point—had as much reason to be angry with Henry Ford. Ford himself was extremely nervous at one point because I was spending so much time with Bugas. Yet while Bugas was certainly helpful to me, and knew a great deal about Ford’s personal life, he was only mildly revealing as a source. I spent so much time with him largely because we enjoyed each other’s company; both serious baseball fans, we usually held our later appointments in his box seats at Tiger Stadium, where he would reminisce more about the days of Hank Greenberg than of Harry Bennett.

  Interviewed for the Japanese section: James Abegglen, Naohiro Amaya, Satoshi Aoki, Fumiko Araki, Hideo Asahara, Yaichi Ayukawa, Merrick Baker-Bates, Pete Brock, Phil Broman, Mark Brown, Frank Cary, Otis Cary, Jay Chai, Bill Chapman, Atsuko Chiba, Tetsuya Chikushi, Bill Clark, Gerald Curtis, Midori Curtis, Michael Cusumano, Toshiko Dahlby, Tracy Dahlby, Peter Dennison-Edson, George DeVos, Bill Dizer, Takeo Doi, Jack Eby, Yukhito Eguchi, Takuro Endo, Tadayoshi Enju, Roy Essoyan, Bob Fisher, Glen Fukushima, Yoichi Funabashi, Barbara Gewirtz, Elliot Gewirtz, Alex Gibney, Frank Gibney, Donald Gorham, William Gorham, Koichi Goto, Mitsuya Goto, Joseph Greenwald, Peter Grilli, Clyde Haberman, Eleanor Hadley, Fumiko Halloran, Richard Halloran, Tsuneyuki Hane, Teiichi Hara, Michio Hatada, Tsuyoshi Hayashi, Gerd Hijino, Shigeki Hijino, Takuzo Hiki, Tadashi Igarashi, Tatsuya Imai, Robert Immerman, Munemichi Inoue, Takeshi Isayama, Hideo Ishihara, Tadashi Ishihara, Kaoru Ishikawa, Sam Jameson, Chalmers Johnson, Sheila Johnson, Naotake Kaibara, Kaiichi Kanao, Hajime Karatsu, Mikio Kato, Hideaki Kase, Yutaka Katayama, Katsuji Kawamata, Kinji Kawamura, Soichi Kawazoe, Dusty Kidd, Eric Klestadt, Chizuko Kobayashi, Noritake Kobayashi, Yotaro Kobayashi, Kazuo Koike, Tetsuo Komatsu, Masataka Kosaka, Takahiro Koyama, Bernard Krisher, Tokuichi Kumagai, Masao Kunihiro, Sadayuki Kuriyama, Jim Laurie, Masako Laurie, Nancy Lehner, Urban Lehner, Ray Lemke, Tim McGinnis, Ichiro Maeda, Hideshi Maki, Shin Maki, Mike Mansfield, Mayfield Marshall, Bradley Martin, Kathleen Martin, Jurek Martin, Keikichi Matsumoto, Yukio Matsuyama, Masaru Miyake, Tom Mori, Yoshihiko Morozumi, Masumi Muramatsu, Kiyoaki Murata, Michio Nagai, Hideya Nakamura, Yoshikazu Nakashima, Sohei Nakayama, Hideo Numasaki, Sadaaki Numata, Miyoji Ochiai, Dan Okimoto, Saburo Okita, Keigo Okongi, Masataka Okuma, Shoji Okumura, Shintaro Ota, George Packard, Wingate Packard, John Parker, Anne Pepper, Tom Pepper, John Curtis Perry, Tait Ratcliffe, Ed Reingold, Edwin O. Reischauer, Donald Richie, David Riesman, Johnnie Rinard, John Roderick, Junichiro Sakura, Henry Scott-Stokes, Isaac Shapiro, Yonetaro Shimatani, Ichiro Shioji, Rei Shiratori, Saburo Shiroyama, Janet Snyder, Akira Sugita, Bunzo Suzuki, Tadashi Suzuki, Takao Suzuki, Takashi Tachibana, Sadao Tachikawa, Rennosuke Takeda, Yasuo Takeyama, Katsuo Tamura, Kinichi Tamura, Kuniyuki Tanabe, Akinori Tanaka, Kanichi Tanaka, Minom Tanaka, Sanosuke Tanaka, Yasumasa Tanaka, Michael Tharp, Gordon Togasaki, Tamiyo Togasaki, Shigehiko Togo, Kisaburo Tsubura, Tadao Umesao, Shunchiro Umetani, Masataka Usami, Ezra Vogel, Susumu Wakamori, Nobe Wakatsuki, Saburo Watanabe, Robert Whiting, Jack Yamaguchi, Kenichi Yamamoto, Nobuyoshi Yoshida, and T. F. Yukawa. Korea: Ahn Sung Chan, Chung Se Yung, Kang Oh Ryong, John Kim, Stewart Kim, Y. S. Kim, Kwon Ki Chul, Stan Lee, Park Jin Kean, H. B. Suh, Bill Vaughan, Greg Warner, Ed White, and Yoo Mai Bok.

  Interviewed for the American section: Tom Adams, William Agee, Bob Alexander, Roger Altman, Martin Anderson, Lee Bach, George Ball, Ken Bannon, Jack Barnes, Baron Bates, Calvin Beauregard, Clay Bedford, George Bennett, Bill Benton, Ben Bidwell, Barry Bluestone, Irving Bluestone, Michael Blumenthal, Ron Boltz, Gene Bordinat, Bill Bourke, George Brown, Holmes Brown, Warren Buffet, John Bugas, Philip Caldwell, Jim Cannon, John Chancellor, Roy Chapin, Sis Chapin, Richard Clurman, Shirley Clurman, Dolly Cole, Robert Cole, Jack Conway, Andrew Court, Keith Crain, Mary Kay Crain, David Crippen, Mike Cronin, Paul Crowley, Ron Daniel, Sam Daume, David E. Davis, Jeannie Davis, Don DeLaRossa, John DeLorean, Ron DeLuca, W. Edwards Deming, Jake Diaz, Chuck Dotterer, Peter Drucker, David Eisenberg, John English, Tom Feaheny, David Fine, Arthur Fleischer, A. P. Fontaine, Jack Fontaine, Charlotte Ford, Edsel Ford II, Henry Ford II, Doug Fraser, Donald Frey, Stuart Frey, Sheldon Friedman, Steve Friedman, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ray Geddes, Roswell Gilpatric, Joel Goddard, Joyce Goddard, Jack Goldman, Pat Greathouse, Bob Greenhill, Gerry Greenwald, Bill Haddad, Bill Hambrecht, Walter Hayes, Jay Higgins, Dick Holbrooke, Hudson Holland, Jr., Fred Hooven, Robert Hormats, Joseph Hudson, Jr., Lee Iacocca, Bill Innes, Don Jahncke, Don Jesmore, Edward Johnson III, Arvid Jouppi, Joseph Juran, Sandy Kaplan, Eugene Keilin, Leo Kelmenson, Tom Killefer, Bunkie Knudsen, Florence Knudsen, Norman Krandall, Wendell Larsen, David Lawrence, Don Lennox, Robert Lenzner, Walter Levy, David Lewis, Martin Lipton, David McCammon, Arch McCardell, Amy McCombs, Paul McCracken, Gillis MacGill Addison, Sid McKenna, Matt McLaughlin, Don Mandich, Nancy Mann, Karl Mantyla, David Maxey, Charles Maxwell, Ted Mecke, Kay Meehan, Arjay Miller, Elaine Mittleman, Ron Moen, Chase Morsey, Franklin Murphy, Walter Murphy, Ralph Nader, John Nevin, John Nichols, William Niskanen, Norman Pearlstine, William Perry, Don Petersen, Nick Pileggi, Bob Pisor, Richard Rainwater, Erick Reickert, Ralph W. E. Reid, Felix Rohatyn, George Romney, Dick Royal, Marvin Runyon, Paul Schrade, Steve Schwarzman, Bill Scollard, Fred Secrest, William Serrin, Brendan Sexton, Harley Shaiken, Irving Shapiro, Bill Sheehan, Victor Sheinman, Carroll Shelby, Bill Scherkenbach, Herb Segal, Martin Siegel, Sue Smock, Bob Spencer, Hal Sperlich, Arthur Stanton, Philip Stearns, Don Stillman, Gordon Strossberg, Bob Teeter, Jack Telnack, Jerry terHorst, Michael Thomas, Myron Tribus, Gerald Tsai, Raymond Vernon, Phil Villers, Tom Volpe, Bruce Wasserstein, Neil Waud, Michael Wendler, John Whitehead, Jerry Wiesner, Bill Winn, Jack Withrow, Leonard Woodcock, Pat Wright, and Ian Zwicker. (Of the principals both Robert McNamara, who cited the frailty of his memory, and J. Edward Lundy, who kept to his rule of giving no interviews to anyone from the press, declined to be interviewed for this book. There were of course others who declined to see me, or simply did not return my phone messages.)

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  IN MY READING CERTAIN books were particularly helpful and I used them as pathfinders: John Brooks’s The Go-go Years, Ed Cray’s The Chrome Colossus, William Manchester’s American Caesar, Michael Moritz and Barrett Seaman’s Going for Broke, the Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill three-part history of the Ford Motor Company, William Serrin’s The Company and the Union, Keith Sward’s The Legend of Henry Ford, and John Toland’s The Rising Sun.

  Ab
egglen, James. Management and Worker: The Japanese Solution. Tokyo and New York: Kodansha, 1973.

  ______, and Stalk, George, Jr. Kaisha: The Japanese Corporation. New York: Basic Books, 1986.

  Abernathy, William. The Productivity Dilemma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.

  _______; Clark, Kim; and Kantrow, Alan. Industrial Renaissance: Producing a Competitive Future for America. New York: Basic Books, 1983.

  Allen, Frederick Lewis. Only Yesterday. New York: Harper, 1931.

  Aoki, Satoshi. The Crisis of the Nissan Group. Tokyo: Chobunsha, 1980.

  ______. Secrets of the Nissan S-organization. Tokyo: Chobunsha, 1981.

  Bainbridge, John. The Super-Americans. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972.

  Barnard, John. Walter Reuther and the Rise of the Auto World. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983.

  Barnet, Richard J. The Alliance. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.

  Beasley, Norman. Knudsen. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1947.

  Bennett, Harry (with Paul Marcus). We Never Called Him Henry. New York: Fawcett, 1951.

  Bluestone, Barry, and Harrison, Bennett. The De-industrialization of America. New York: Basic Books, 1982.

  Brooks, John. Once in Golconda. New York: Harper and Row, 1969.

  ______. The Go-go Years. New York: Weybright and Talley, 1973.

  Burlingame, Roger. Engines of Democracy. New York: Scribners, 1946.

  ______. Henry Ford: A Great Life in Brief. New York: Knopf, 1955.

  Chandler, Alfred D., and Salsbury, Stephen. Pierre du Pont and the Making of the Modern Corporation. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

  Chinoy, Eli. Automobile Workers and the American Dream. New York: Doubleday, 1955.

  Christopher, Robert. The Japanese Mind. New York: Linden Press, 1983.