WikiPortallus: Occupied Japan.html

Japan initially surrendered to the Allies on August 14th, 1945, when the Japanese Suzuki government notified the Allies that it had accepted the Potsdam Declaration. On the following day, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's unconditional surrender on the radio. The announcement was the emperor's first ever radio broadcast and the first time most citizens of Japan ever heard their sovereign's voice.¹ This date is known as Victory Over Japan, or V-J Day, and marked the end of World War II and the beginning of a long road to recovery for a shattered Japan.

On V-J Day, United States President Harry Truman appointed General Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), to supervise the occupation of Japan. During the war, the Allied Powers had planned to divide Japan amongst themselves for the purposes of occupation, as was done for the occupation of Germany. Under the final plan, however, SCAP was given direct control over the main islands of Japan (Honshū, Hokkaidō, Shikoku and Kyūshū) and the immediately surrounding islands, while outlying possessions were divided between the Allied Powers as follows:

It is unclear why the occupation plan was changed. Common theories include the increased power of the United States following development of the atomic bomb, Truman's greater distrust of the Soviet Union when compared with Roosevelt, and an increased desire to contain Soviet expansion in the Far East after the Yalta Conference.

The Soviet Union had some intentions of occupying Hokkaidō.² Had this occurred, there might have been the foundation of a communist "Democratic People's Republic of Japan" in the Soviet zone of occupation. However, unlike the Soviet occupations of East Germany and North Korea, these plans were frustrated by the opposition of President Truman.²

The Far Eastern Commission and Allied Council For Japan were also established to supervise the occupation of Japan. ³

Japanese officials left for Manila on August 19 to meet MacArthur and to be briefed on his plans for the occupation. On August 28, 150 U.S. personnel flew to Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture. They were followed by USS Missouri, whose accompanying vessels landed the 4th Marine Division on the southern coast of Kanagawa. Other Allied personnel followed.

MacArthur arrived in Tokyo on August 30, and immediately decreed several laws: No Allied personnel were to assault Japanese people. No Allied personnel were to eat the scarce Japanese food. Flying the Hinomaru or "Rising Sun" flag was initially severely restricted (although individuals and prefectural offices could apply for permission to fly it). The restriction was partially lifted in 1948 and completely lifted the following year.⁴

On September 2, Japan formally surrendered with the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender. Allied (primarily American) forces were set up to supervise the country. General MacArthur was technically supposed to defer to an advisory council set up by the Allied powers but in practice did everything himself. His first priority was to set up a food distribution network; following the collapse of the ruling government and the wholesale destruction of most major cities virtually everyone was starving. Even with these measures, millions of people were still on the brink of starvation for several years after the surrender.⁵

Once the food network was in place, at a cost of up to US$1 million per day, MacArthur set out to win the support of Hirohito. The two men met for the first time on September 27; the photograph of the two together is one of the most famous in Japanese history. However, many were shocked that MacArthur wore his standard duty uniform with no tie instead of his dress uniform when meeting the emperor. MacArthur may have done this on purpose, to send a message as to what he considered the emperor's status to be.⁶ With the sanction of Japan's reigning monarch, MacArthur had the ammunition he needed to begin the real work of the occupation. While other Allied political and military leaders pushed for Hirohito to be tried as a war criminal, MacArthur resisted such calls and rejected the claims of members of the imperial family such as Prince Mikasa and Prince Higashikuni and intellectuals like Tatsuji Miyoshi who asked for the emperor's abdication,⁷ arguing that any such prosecution would be overwhelmingly unpopular with the Japanese people.

By the end of 1945, more than 350,000 U.S. personnel were stationed throughout Japan. By the beginning of 1946, replacement troops began to arrive in the country in large numbers and were assigned to MacArthur's Eighth Army, headquartered in Tokyo's Dai-Ichi building. Of the main Japanese islands, Kyūshū was occupied by the 24th Infantry Division, with some responsibility for Shikoku. Honshū was occupied by the First Cavalry Division. Hokkaidō was occupied by the 11th Airborne Division.

By June 1950, all of these army units had suffered extensive troop reductions, and their combat effectiveness was seriously weakened. When North Korea invaded South Korea, elements of the 24th Division were flown into South Korea to try to stem the massive invasion force there, but the green occupation troops, while acquitting themselves well when suddenly thrown into combat almost overnight, suffered heavy casualties and were forced into retreat until other Japan occupation troops could be sent to assist.

The official British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF), composed of Australian, British, Indian and New Zealand personnel, was deployed on February 21, 1946. While U.S. forces were responsible for overall military government, BCOF was responsible for supervising demilitarization and the disposal of Japan's war industries. [1] BCOF was also responsible for occupation of several western prefectures and had its headquarters at Kure. At its peak, the force numbered about 40,000 personnel. During 1947, BCOF began to decrease its activities in Japan, and it was officially wound up in 1951.

Accomplishments of the Occupation

Disarmament

Japan's postwar constitution, adopted under Allied supervision, included a "Peace Clause" (Article 9), which renounced war and banned Japan from maintaining any armed forces. This was intended to prevent the country from ever becoming an aggressive military power again. However, within a decade, America was pressuring Japan to rebuild its army as a bulwark against Communism in Asia after the Chinese Revolution and the Korean War, and Japan established Self-Defense Forces. Traditionally, Japan's military spending has been restricted to about 1% of its GNP, though this is by popular practice, not law, and has fluctuated up and down from this figure. Recently, past Prime Ministers Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe, and other politicians have tried to repeal or amend the clause. Although the American Occupation was to demilitarize the Japanese, due to an Asian threat of communism, the Japanese military slowly regained its powerful status. Japan currently has the sixth largest military budget in the world.⁸

Liberalization

The Allies attempted to dismantle the Japanese Zaibatsu. However, the Japanese resisted these attempts, claiming that the zaibatsu were required in order for Japan to compete internationally, and looser industrial groupings known as keiretsu evolved. A major land reform was also conducted, led by Wolf Ladejinsky of General Douglas MacArthur's SCAP staff. However, Ladejinsky has stated that the real architect of reform was Socialist Hiro Wada, former Japanese Minister of Agriculture.⁹ Between 1947 and 1949, approximately 5.8 million acres (23,470 km², or approximately 38% of Japan's cultivated land) of land were purchased from the landlords under the government's reform program, and resold at extremely low prices (after inflation) to the farmers who worked them. By 1950, three million peasants had acquired land, dismantling a power structure that the landlords had long dominated.¹⁰

Democratization

In 1946, the Diet ratified a new Constitution of Japan which followed closely a 'model copy' prepared by the Occupational authorities (and American authors), and was promulgated as an amendment to the old Prussian-style Meiji Constitution. The new constitution guaranteed basic freedoms and civil liberties, gave women the right to vote, abolished nobility, and, perhaps most importantly, made the emperor the symbol of Japan, removing him from politics. Shinto was abolished as a state religion, and Christianity reappeared in the open for the first time in decades. On April 10, 1946, an election that saw 78.52% voter turnout among men and 66.97% among women¹¹ gave Japan its first modern prime minister, Shigeru Yoshida.

Education reform

Before and during the war, Japanese education was based on the German system, with "Gymnasium" (English: High Schools) and universities to train students after primary school. During the occupation, Japan's secondary education system was changed to incorporate three-year junior high schools and senior high schools similar to those in the U.S.: junior high became compulsory but senior high remained optional. The Imperial Rescript on Education was repealed, and the Imperial University system reorganized. The longstanding issue of Japanese script reform, which had been planned for decades but continuously opposed by more conservative elements, was also resolved during this time. The Japanese written system was drastically reorganized with the Tōyō kanji-list in 1946, predecessor of today's Jōyō kanji, and orthography was greatly altered to reflect spoken usage.

Purging of war criminals

Before the war crimes trials actually convened, the SCAP, the IPS and Shōwa officials worked behind the scenes not only to prevent the imperial family from being indicted, but also to slant the testimony of the defendants to ensure that no one implicated the Emperor. High officials in court circles and the Shōwa government collaborated with Allied GHQ in compiling lists of prospective war criminals, while the individuals arrested as Class A suspects and incarcerated in Sugamo prison solemnly vowed to protect their sovereign against any possible taint of war responsibility.¹² Thus, "months before the Tokyo tribunal commenced, MacArthur's highest subordinates were working to attribute ultimate responsibility for Pearl Harbor to Hideki Tōjō"¹³ by allowing "the major criminal suspects to coordinate their stories so that the Emperor would be spared from indictment."¹⁴ and "with the full support of MacArthur's headquarters, the prosecution functioned, in effect, as a defense team for the emperor."¹⁵

Negative Impact of the Occupation

Rape

In the first 10 days of the occupation, over one thousand rapes were committed in Kanagawa prefecture alone.¹⁸ According to John W. Dower, there were around 40 reported rapes a day until the spring of 1946, when the figures rose to over 300 reported rapes a day due to the criminalization of prostitution.¹⁹

The criminalization of prostitution and brothels also lead to mass rapes in the spring of 1946.^{citation needed} On April 4, 50 GIs broke into a hospital in Omori prefecture and raped 77 women, including a woman who had just given birth. It is also reported that the woman's baby was killed during the assault. On April 11, forty US soldiers cut phone lines to a housing block in Nagoya city, and simultaneously raped "many girls and women between the ages of 10 and 55 years."¹⁹

Censorship

The Allied occupation forces suppressed news of criminal activities such as rape, on September 10 1945 SCAP "issued press and pre-censorship codes outlawing the publication of all reports and statistics 'inimical to the objectives of the Occupation'."²⁰

Allied censorship in Japan not only forbade criticism of the U.S. and other Allies "but the mention of censorship itself was forbidden." All traces of censorship had to be concealed, thus exasperating publicists since they could no longer simply redact material that the authorities found sensitive as had been done during the war, but instead had to rewrite the full text.²¹

Industrial disarmament

In order to further remove Japan as a potential future threat to the U.S. the Far Eastern Commission decided that Japan was to be partly de-industrialized. The necessary dismantling of Japanese industry was foreseen to have been achieved when Japanese standards of living had been reduced to those existing in Japan the period 1930 - 1934.²²²³ In the end the adopted program of de-industrialisation in Japan was implemented to a lesser degree than the similar U.S. "industrial disarmament" program in Germany.²² In view of the cost to American taxpayers for emergency food aid to Japan, in April 1948 the Johnston Committee Report recommended that the economy of Japan should instead be reconstructed. The report included suggestions for reductions in war reparations, and a relaxation of the "economic deconcentration" policy. For the fiscal year of 1949 funds were moved from the GARIOA budget into an Economic Rehabilitation in Occupied Areas (EROA) programme, to be used for the import of materials needed for economic reconstruction.

Comfort women

With the acceptance of the Allied occupation authorities the Japanese organized a brothel system for the benefit of the more than 300,000 occupation troops. "The strategy was, through the special work of experienced women, to create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls."

In December 1945 a senior officer with the Public Health and Welfare Division of the occupation's General Headquarters wrote regarding the typical prostitute:

"The worst victims ... were the women who, with no previous experience, answered the ads calling for 'Women of the New Japan,"'

When McArthur finally closed the brothels in March 25, 1946, it is estimated that more than 25% of the U.S. troops had sexually transmitted diseases. [2] [3] [4] [5]

Expulsions

The Soviet Union annexed South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, expelling 400,000 Japanese from Sakhalin.

Other

In a bid to occupy as much Japanese territory as possible Soviet troops continued offensive military operations also after the Japanese surrender, causing large scale civilian casualties. [6]

Politics

Political parties had begun to revive almost immediately after the occupation began. Left-wing organizations, such as the Japan Socialist Party and the Japan Communist Party, quickly reestablished themselves, as did various conservative parties. The old Seiyukai and Rikken Minseito came back as, respectively, the Liberal Party (Nihon Jiyuto) and the Japan Progressive Party (Nihon Shimpoto). The first postwar elections were held in 1946 (women were given the franchise for the first time), and the Liberal Party's vice president, Yoshida Shigeru (1878-1967), became prime minister. For the 1947 elections, anti-Yoshida forces left the Liberal Party and joined forces with the Progressive Party to establish the new Democratic Party of Japan (Minshuto). This divisiveness in conservative ranks gave a plurality to the Japan Socialist Party, which was allowed to form a cabinet, which lasted less than a year. Thereafter, the socialist party steadily declined in its electoral successes. After a short period of Democratic Party administration, Yoshida returned in late 1948 and continued to serve as prime minister until 1954. However, because of a heart failure Yoshida was replaced by Shinto in 1955.

End of the occupation

In 1949, MacArthur rubber-stamped a sweeping change in the SCAP power structure that greatly increased the power of Japan's native rulers, and as his attention (and that of the White House) gradually diverted to the Korean War, the occupation began to draw to a close. The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed on September 8, 1951, marked the end of the Allied occupation, and when it went into effect on April 28, 1952, Japan was once again an independent state (with the exceptions of Okinawa, which remained under U.S. control until 1972, and Iwo Jima, which remained under US control until 1968). Even though some 47,000 U.S. military personnel remain in Japan today, they are there at the invitation of the Japanese government under the terms of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan and not as an occupying force.

Cultural reaction

Hirohito’s surrender broadcast was a profound shock to Japanese citizens. After years of being told about Japan’s military might and the inevitability of victory, these beliefs were proven false in the space of a few minutes. But for many people, these were only secondary concerns since they were also facing starvation and homelessness.

Post-war Japan was chaotic. The air raids on urban centers left millions displaced and food shortages, created by bad harvests and the demands of the war, worsened when the importation of food from Korea, Taiwan, and China ceased.²⁴ Repatriation of Japanese living in other parts of Asia only aggravated the problems in Japan as these displaced people put more strain on already scarce resources. Over 5.1 million Japanese returned to Japan in the fifteen months following October 1, 1945.²⁵ Alcohol and drug abuse became major problems. Deep exhaustion, declining morale and despair was so widespread that it was termed the "kyodatsu condition."²⁶ Inflation was rampant and many people turned to the black market in order to buy even the most basic goods. Prostitution also increased considerably.

In the 1950s, kasutori culture emerged. In response to the scarcity of the previous years, this sub-culture, named after the preferred drink of the artists and writers who embodied it, emphasized escapism, entertainment and decadence.²⁷

The phrase "shikata ga nai," or "nothing can be done about it," was commonly used in both Japanese and American press to encapsulate the Japanese public's resignation to the harsh conditions endured while under occupation. However, not everyone reacted the same way to the hardships of the postwar period. While some succumbed to the difficulties, many more were resilient. As the country regained its footing, they were able to bounce back as well.

Occupied Japan.html

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