Occupation of Japan

At the end of the Second World War, Japan was occupied by Allied Powers. The United States played the leading role in the occupation. 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.

Surrender

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Representatives of Japan stand aboard the USS Missouri prior to signing of the Instrument of Surrender

Japan 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.

At Potsdam, United States President Harry Truman, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had agreed on how the Allied occupation of the Japanese Empire would be carried out. The Soviet Union would be responsible for North Korea, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, while the United States and the British Empire would have the responsibility for Japan, South Korea, and Japan's remaining possessions in Oceania.

On V-J Day, 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 US personnel flew to Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, and became the first Allied forces to land on Japanese soil. 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 himself arrived in Tokyo on August 30, and immediately set several laws: No Allied personnel were to fraternize with Japanese people. 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 a 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. (Guillain, 1981) With the sanction of Japan's reigning monarch, MacArthur now 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, arguing that any such prosecution would be overwhelmingly unpopular with the Japanese people.

By the end of 1945, more than 350,000 US personnel were stationed throughout Japan.

The official British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF), comprised of Australian, British, Indian and New Zealand personnel, was deployed on February 21, 1946. While US forces were responsible for overall military government, BCOF was responsible for supervising demilitarisation 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

Recently, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and other politicians have tried to repeal this clause. The initial intent of the "Peace Clause" was to prevent the country from ever becoming an aggressive military power again. However, within less than a decade, America was pressuring Japan to rebuild its army as a bulwark against Communism in Asia. Traditionally, Japan's military spending has been restricted to about 1% of its budget, though this is by popular practice, not law, and has fluctuated up and down from this figure (see Defense budget of Japan). Even so, at $46.9 billion in 2003, Japan's defense budget is the second-largest in the world, at 5% of the worldwide total spent on defense.

Liberalization

The Allies attempted to dismantle the Japanese Zaibatsu. However, the Japanese resisted these attempts claiming that they were required in order for Japan to compete internationally. 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 constitiution 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 of that year, 14 million turned out for the election that gave Japan its first modern prime minister, Shigeru Yoshida.

Unionization

This turned out to be one of the greatest hurdles of the occupation, as communism had become increasingly popular among the poorer Japanese workers for several decades, and took advantage of Japan's recent left-leaning atmosphere. In February 1947, Japan's workers were ready to call a general strike, in an attempt to take over their factories; MacArthur warned that he would not allow such a strike to take place, and the unions eventually relented, making them lose face and effectively subduing them for the remainder of the occupation.

Education reform

Before and during the war, Japanese education was based on the German system, with gymnasiums 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 US: 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 grammar was greatly altered to reflect conversational usage.

Hideki Tojo takes the stand at the Tokyo war crimes tribunal

Purging of war leaders

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. Once Japan's wartime leaders were weeded out, a generation of junior officers was ready to take command of the country.

Japanese Politics during the Occupation Period

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 Seiyokai 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.

The 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 exception of Okinawa, which remained under US control until 1972). Even though some 47,000 US 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", 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.