Ceylon Stands Up for Defeated Foe Japan

Finance Minister J. R. Jayewardene’s finest hour

They say elephants have long memories and never forgive a hurt. But a man who later became leader of Ceylon’s evergreen political group – the United National Party (UNP) – not only forgave the enemy but also laid the foundation for grateful and mindful remembrances by that vanquished foe.

The time and place for this was the signing of The Treaty of Peace with Japan – more formally, the Treaty of San Francisco, as in that US city, where on 8 September 1951, 49 nations officially ended the legal state of war and sought reparations from the former Axis power.
According to the New York Times, it was “the voice of free Asia, eloquent, melancholy and still strong with the lilt of an Oxford accent,” which two days before had sounded a discordant if decidedly tranquil and harmonious note.

“We in Ceylon were fortunate that we were not invaded,” orated the island nation’s delegate in San Francisco, its Finance Minister J. R. Jayewardene, adding: “But the damage caused by air raids, by the stationing of enormous armies under the South-East Asia Command and by the ‘slaughter tapping’ of one of our main commodities, rubber, when we the only producer of natural rubber for the Allies, entitles us to ask that the damage so caused should be repaired.”

Having thus invoked a sense of guilt and shame where they were perhaps due, the statesman in the making continued: “We do not intend to do so; for we believe the words of the ‘Great Teacher’ (Buddha), whose message has ennobled the lives of countless millions in Asia – that ‘hatred ceases not by hatred but by love’.

Thus preaching to the choir in a congregation of so-called ‘Christian nations’ to whose ears this dictum could hardly be foreign, ‘JR’ – as he was known by many – the wily old fox concluded that “this treaty is as magnanimous as it is just to a defeated foe.”
He continued: “We extend to Japan the hand of friendship and trust that with the closing of this chapter in the history of man, the last page of which we write today, and with the beginning of the new one, the first page of which we dictate tomorrow, her people and ours may march together to enjoy the full dignity of human life in peace and prosperity.”

A man who later became leader of Ceylon’s evergreen political group … not only forgave the enemy but also laid the foundation for grateful and mindful remembrances of a vanquished foe