Nixon and Hirohito at Elmendorf
Alaska
On a night in late September, nineteen seventy-one, something happened at this airfield that had never happened before in the long history of Japan. A reigning Japanese emperor set foot on foreign soil.
Emperor Hirohito was flying to Europe, and his plane stopped here at Elmendorf Air Force Base to refuel. Waiting on the tarmac was President Richard Nixon, who had flown all the way to Alaska just for this. The two leaders met under full military honors.
It was a careful piece of diplomacy. Only twenty-six years after the end of the Second World War, the head of state of Japan and the President of the United States stood together and shook hands on American ground.
