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At the end of the Second World War, 'Japan was occupied' by the Allied Powers, led by the United States. This was the first time since the unification of Japan that the island nation had been occupied by a foreign power. 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.

Contents

Surrender

Accomplishments of the Occupation

Disarmament

Liberalization

Democratization

Education reform

Purging of war criminals

Politics

End of the occupation

Cultural reaction

Legacy

See also

References

External links

Surrender

Japan initially surrendered to the Allies on August 14, 1945, when Emperor Hirohito accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. On the following day, Hirohito announced Japan's surrender on the radio. It was V-J Day, the end of World War II, and the beginning of a long road to recovery for a shattered Japan.
The Soviet Union was responsible for North Korea, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, while the United States and British Commonwealth forces were responsible for Japan, South Korea, and Japan's remaining possessions in Oceania. The Republic of China was given control over Taiwan and the Pescadores. The Far Eastern Commission and Allied Council For Japan were also established to supervise the occupation of Japan.[1] On V-J Day, United States President Harry Truman appointed General Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, to supervise the occupation of Japan. 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.

On September 2, Japan formally surrendered, signing the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, and the occupation began. Allied (primarily American) forces supervised 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.

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 28; 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.^[1] 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 ^[2], 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.[2] 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 Minister Junichiro Koizumi, present Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and other politicians have tried to repeal or amend the clause.

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, and five million acres (20,000 km²) of land were taken out of the hands of landlords and given to the farmers who worked them.

Democratization

In 1946, the Diet ratified a new Constitution of Japan which followed closely a 'model copy' prepared by the Occupational authorities, and was promulgated as an amendment to the old Prussian-style Meiji Constitution. The new constitution guaranteed basic freedoms and civil liberties, 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. Women gained the right to vote, and in April 1946, 14 million turned out for the election that 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 restricting Kanji usage, 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 to give the Toyo Kanji, predecessor of today's Jōyō kanji, and orthography was greatly altered to reflect spoken usage.

Purging of war criminals

While these other reforms were taking place, various military tribunals, most notably the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Ichigaya, were trying Japan's war criminals and sentencing many to death and imprisonment. However, many suspects such as Tsuji Masanobu, Nobusuke Kishi, Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa were never judged, while the Showa Emperor, all members of the imperial family implicated in the war such as Prince Chichibu, Prince Asaka, Prince Hiroyasu Fushimi, Prince Higashikuni and Prince Takeda, and all members of Unit 731 were exonerated from criminal prosecutions by MacArthur.
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.^[3] Thus, "months before the Tokyo tribunal commenced, MacArthur's highest subordinates were working to attribute ultimate responsibility for Pearl Harbor to Hideki Tōjō"^[4] by allowing "the major criminal suspects to coordinate their stories so that the Emperor would be spared from indictment."^[5]
For historian John W. Dower, (Dower, Ibid., p. 562)

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 (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

★ 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.

★ The occupation was satirised in the 1956 American film ''The Teahouse of the August Moon''.

Legacy

According to John W. Dower, «In retrospect, apart from the military officer corps, the purge of alleged militarists and ultranationalists that was conducted under the Occupation had relatively small impact on the long-term composition of men of influence in the public and private sectors. The purge initially brought new blood into the political parties, but this was offset by the return of huge numbers of formaly purged conservative politicians to national as well as local politics in the early 1950s. In the bureaucracy, the purge was negligible from the outset... In the economic sector, the purge similarly was only mildly disruptive, affecting less than sixteen hundred individuals spread among some four hundred companies. Everywhere one looks, the corridors of power in postwar Japan are crowded with men whose talents had already been recognized during the war years, and who found the same talents highly prized in the "new" Japan.» (J. W. Dower, ''Japan in War & Peace'', New press, 1993, p.11)
The U.S. occupation left a lasting impact. The importance of democracy became better understood in Japan, and they had less respect for the proponents of a hierarchical society. Japanese democracy, freedom of the press, rejection of militarism and nationalism are all legacies of MacArthur's post-war policies. The nation has been secured within the U.S. sphere of influence and protection with the U.S. backed conservative Liberal Democratic Party ruling in perpetuity until today. The stability in Japan has contributed to the economic success of Japan.

See also

★ Far Eastern Commission

★ Japanese war crimes

★ World War II

★ Task Force 31

★ Military rule

★ 1945 in Japan

★ History of Japan

★ Pacific War

References

★ John W. Dower, ''Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II.'' Norton, 1999. ISBN 0393046869

★ Robert Guillain, ''I saw Tokyo burning: An eyewitness narrative from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima'' (J. Murray, 1981). ISBN 0385157010

★ Yoneyuki Sugita, ''Pitfall or Panacea - The Irony of US Power in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952'' (Rutledge, 2003). ISBN 0-415-94752-9

External links

★ The U.S. Army in Post WWII Japan

★ The Road Ahead: Lessons in Nation Building from Japan, Germany, and Afghanistan for Postwar Iraq, by Ray Salvatore Jennings May 2003, Peaceworks No. 49, United States Institute of Peace (The PDF report contains an excellent chapter on the occupation policys.)

★ Memories of War: The Second World War and Japanese Historical Memory in Comparative Perspective

★ Kure Kids (The Hidden Legacy of War) - Legacy of mixed-blood children during Occupation. Foreign Correspondent, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

★ A sweet memory: My first encounter of an American soldier

★ Hirata Tetsuo and John W. Dower, "Japan's Red Purge: Lessons from a Saga of Suppression of Free Speech and Thought"

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''This period is part of the Shōwa period of Japanese History''
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