On Friday, March 21 the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum held a panel discussion about “JFK, RFK, and Japan,” co-sponsored by the Japanese Consulate of Boston. The event was based on my National Interest article about the remarkable 1962 visit to Japan by Robert and Ethel Kennedy, and the turnaround in US-Japan relations under the Kennedy administration.

I spoke on the panel, which you can watch here, along with Harvard Professor Emeritus Akira Iriye and Ms. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (Robert F. Kennedys’ eldest child). It was a wonderful discussion blending the personal and political, and describing the remarkable events of the turbulent 1950s and early 1960s.  We talked about how Robert Kennedy was conducting an advance visit for the real main event — a presidential visit to Tokyo and reunion of the crews of PT-109 and the vessel that sank it, Amagiri. Tragically, due to JFK’s assassination, the visit would never occur. Regardless, Robert and Ethel Kennedy, President Kennedy, Ambassador Edwin O. Reischauer, and their dedicated partners on the Japanese side helped move the two countries away from a narrow, purely strategic marriage of convenience toward a warm “equal partnership.”