History
Since the opening of Japan by Commodore Matthew C. Perry, in 1854, the U.S. maintained diplomatic relations with Japan, except for the ten-year period following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declaration of war on Japan by the United States. The United States maintains an embassy in Tokyo, with consulates-general in Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, and Naha.
In recent years, the post has been held by many significant American politicians, including Mike Mansfield, Walter Mondale, Tom Foley and Howard Baker.
The current ambassador to Japan is John Roos who was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate on August 7, 2009. Roos presented his credentials to His Imperial Majesty Akihito, Emperor of Japan, on August 20, 2009.
Read more about this topic: United States Ambassador To Japan
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)