After seventy years, U.S. bases in Japan continue to inspire ambivalence, resentment, resistance, and even fear for many Japanese people. To improve the public image of the U.S. armed forces, base administrators create training materials designed to promote cultural awareness, prevent troops’ crimes, and discourage bad behavior. But how does the organization whose purpose is to violently oppose foreign threats to U.S. interests conceive of cultural understanding and sensitivity? Taking as a case study the materials that U.S. Marine Corps bases in Japan produce to instruct newcomers, this article argues that such materials tend to equip base personnel preemptively with strategies for erasing, coopting, and dismissing local anti-base perspectives. Specifically, these materials depict Japanese people as friendly supporters of the military, as irrational and brainwashed puppets of anti-military political forces, or simply as decorative pieces of the cultural backdrop. It concludes that the cultural education materials the U.S. Marine Corps produces at its bases in Japan not only help marines to feel that they have or deserve the support of the Japanese people in carrying out the U.S. military agenda abroad, but that they also promote a sense of cultural superiority that fosters the very behaviors that cultural training materials are meant to prevent.

七十年后，美国在日本的基地继续激起了许多日本人的矛盾，怨恨，抵抗甚至恐惧。为了提高美军的公众形象，基地管理人员制作了培训材料，旨在提高人们的文化意识，预防部队犯罪并阻止不良行为。但是，旨在暴力反对外国对美国利益的威胁的组织如何构想文化理解和敏感性呢？以美国海军陆战队驻日本基地为指导新移民而制作的材料为例，本文认为，这些材料倾向于使基地人员抢先装备消除，采纳和消除当地反基础观点的战略。具体来说，这些材料将日本人描绘成军队的友好支持者，作为反军事政治力量的非理性和洗脑的木偶，或者只是作为文化背景的装饰性片段。结论是，美国海军陆战队在其日本基地生产的文化教育材料不仅帮助海军陆战队感到他们在国外执行美国军事议程时已经或应该得到日本人民的支持，而且还促进了人们的意识。文化优越性的培养促进了文化培训材料本应预防的行为。