AS GEORGE BUSH outlines his "Remember Pearl Harbor" speech upstairs at the White House, as every local TV affiliate combs lists of World War II veterans to find those who can testify to having been there 50 years ago (however accurate their memories are), as other, more equivocal, stories of the war struggle to be heard, one joke echoes on: "The Cold War is over, and the Japanese won."

The anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, everyone seems to agree, is the time to assess and reassess the state of U.S.-Japanese relations today. But every attempt to formulate ethical positions is overshadowed by the images of smoke billowing from the sinking Arizona, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Newsweek, Time and U.S. News and World Report have devoted an astounding 72 pages to their commemorations. (Time, perhaps in honor of its Luce back ground, outdid itself with 32 pages, 24 by its "master historian" Otto Friedrich.) But in each case, the "good points, bad points" history in the articles becomes a sideshow to the hellish navy-yard photos, leaving readers with only one conclusion: They did this.

Of course, news weeklies are not the sole source of American public opinions, but it is worth investigating what, exactly, they are saying, how they are saying it.

THE DISMEMBERING of Pearl Harbor depends on two arguments about Japan: First, the establishment of difference (the bigger the better) between Japan and the U.S. in 1941. Second, the assertion of a timeless continuity in Japanese history, from before the Meiji reforms, through the war and into the next century.

The first part of this project is an easy exercise in McDonald's history: food, folks and fun. U.S. News: "The pilots had break-fasted on plums and rice and wore white cloths marked 'Sure Victory' under their helmets." Newsweek: "There were toasts in sake. Three times the pilots shouted 'Banzai' for the emperor. That night the weather was rough. Many of the pilots stayed aboard for a last round of drinking."

Finally, Time: "Genda, Fuchida and other officers joined [Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of the raid] in eating surume (dried cuttlefish) for happiness and kachiguri (walnuts) for victory."

In the guise of narrative history, each magazine has made it clear that the Japanese pilots are not like American pilots: They eat strange foods (italicize 'em!), have strange customs, use strange words. They are Them, and They are not like Us.

The second historical fact unearthed in these rigorous searches--"they never change"--takes a little more work. U.S. News is the most blatantly stupid: "There have been countless...dramatic changes in 50 years. [Here the changes are listed in three lines.] But the changes can only be understood when set alongside continuities that date not only from the martial Japan of a half-century ago but also from the shogunate of a century before that. America... tends to downplay such continuities. But they provide the theme for the rise of modern Japan."

The next five pages account for those continuities--how Japan has responded to each external shock, rallied its traditions and emerged stronger. The "dramatic changes"--the emergence of the most dynamic industrial economy in the world, the deep seating of pacifism in Japanese foreign policy, the collapse of feudal institutions and the rise of electoral democracy--disappear into the recesses of the reader's mind.

Newsweek brings this "lessons of the past" pap to its logical conclusion: "each country's national character is almost a mirror of the other's." National character, you know, the thing that makes everybody in a country alike. Remember, this is why Germans are so nasty, Poles so hapless, and Chinese so shifty.

"The Japanese are rigid conformists; Americans practice individualism up to--and sometimes over--the brink of selfishness. Americans believe that if they make a better or cheaper product, other people will always buy it, because fairness equates with economic self-interest. The Japanese believe it is almost unpatriotic to buy a foreign product when that might hurt their own farms or factories."

NATIONAL CHARACTER is not what you would call a good analytic tool. The nation hidden inside "national character" is the same top to bottom, generally in agreement, and generally going to stay that way. But such stasis is not a feature of either Japanese or American society today.

Like all capitalist post-feudalist societies, Japan is riven with conflicts. The conflicts may be handled differently, perhaps with what seems to be more adeptness, but they are conflicts.

The news weeklies want to make sure that we know we are dealing with "a Japan that has yet to come to terms with its history," as Time puts it. The Japanese Education Ministry censors texts, keeps them from including any details about the massacres perpetrated by the Japanese army in Nanking, Singapore or Bataan, or the horrific bacteriological warfare experiments conducted on civilians as well.