Everything about Occupation Of Japan totally explained
At the end of the
Second World War,
Japan was occupied by the
Allied Powers, led by the
United States with contributions also from
Australia,
British India, the
United Kingdom and
New Zealand. This foreign presence marked 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 subsequent to its coming into force on
April 28,
1952, Japan was once again an independent state.
Surrender
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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. The announcement was the emperor's first ever radio broadcast and the first time most citizens of Japan ever heard their sovereign's voice. 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. 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.
The
Far Eastern Commission and Allied Council For Japan were also established to supervise the occupation of Japan.
(External Link
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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.
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.
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. 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, 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.
(External Link) 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 fourth largest army based on dollar spent on army resources.
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. (see
Great Depression) 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. (see
Industrial plans for Germany)
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. 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.
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 women 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
Tōyō 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. Thus, "months before the
Tokyo tribunal commenced, MacArthur's highest subordinates were working to attribute ultimate responsibility for
Pearl Harbor to
Hideki Tōjō" by allowing "the major criminal suspects to coordinate their stories so that the Emperor would be spared from indictment." and "with the full support of
MacArthur's headquarters, the prosecution functioned, in effect, as a defense team for the emperor."
For historian
John W. Dower,
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're 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. 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. Alcohol and drug abuse became major problems. Deep exhaustion, declining morale and despair was so widespread that it was termed the "kyodatsu condition." 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.
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.
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