Some seven months before Japan quit the war, the anointed heads of the Institute of Pacific Relations convened in Hot Springs, Virginia to discuss what the Allied Occupation of Japan would look like.
Click here to read about August 28, 1945 – the day the occupation began.
We were sympathetic when we learned that the Japanese did not much care for the movies Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Back to Bataan (1945) or David Lean’s masterpiece Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) – but when we heard that they hated Sands of Iwo Jima (1952) – we finally realized that there are some people you simply cannot please. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who felt this way: the editors of QUICK MAGAZINE were so outraged on this matter they dispatched a reporter to document the venom that spewed-forth from those Japanese lips as they left the theater.
Speaking of naive: when I was privileged to visit Japan in 2011 I actually believed that there would be a few native-born women who would recognize that I was an American and step forward to express some measure of gratitude for my country’s part in granting Japanese women the right to vote. I’m still waiting – however, it is important for all of us to remember that in the immediate aftermath of the war, our occupying forces introduced American values to the Japanese and they have thrived as a result:
General MacArthur has ordered the Japanese Government to provide for freedom of speech, of press, of assembly, and of worship. ‘Thought control’ by the secret police is to be a thing of the past.
A breezy account of American occupied Tokyo as reported by a literary magazine:
Regardless of the festivities, the War Crimes Trials proceed as usual and the accused sit with earphones listening intently as the defense presents the China Phase.
Japan seems to be striving toward Democracy, their interest in government affairs has broadened, and the voting in the national elections showed their arousal.
Should you like to read how the city of Kyoto fared during the Second World War, click here.
Here is an honest report card concerning the first six months of the American occupation of Japan. The list of things that we did successfully at that point were considerably shorter than the list of our failings. Much is said concerning the Japanese deep state and their resistance to the new order.
Standing before the judges who made up the 11-nation war crimes tribunal in occupied Tokyo, General Hideko Tojo, among 19 other Japanese wartime leaders, put on the show of his life:
Without hesitation, Tojo accepted full blame for plunging Japan into war. But it was, he insisted, a ‘defensive’ war, and ‘in no manner a violation of international law..’
The big question for the United States is how long American troops are to occupy Japan. The Potsdam Declaration says that the occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as the objectives outlined are accomplished and ‘there has been established in accordance with the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government.’
U.S. officials appear to be thinking in terms of an occupation of only 5 or 10 years. Japanese officials, however, in looking ahead to a resurgence of Japanese power, appear to be thinking in terms of 50 to 100 years.
Read about the German POWs who were schooled in virtues of democracy.
The Americans arriving in Japan after the surrender proceedings were hellbent on capturing the American traitor who presided over so many disheartening broadcasts — the woman they nicknamed Tokyo Rose:
…one of the supreme objectives of American correspondents landing in Japan was Radio Tokyo. There they hoped to find someone to pass off as the one-and-only Rose and scoop their colleagues. When the information had been sifted a little, a girl named Iva Toguri (Iva Toguri D’Aquino: 1916 – 2006), emerged as the only candidate who came close to filling the bill. For three years she had played records, interspersed with snappy comments, beamed to Allied soldiers on the Zero Hour…Her own name for herself was Orphan Ann.
Toguri’s story was an interesting one that went on for many years and finally resulted in a 1977 pardon granted by one who had listened to many such broadcasts: President Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006), who had served in the Pacific on board the aircraft carrier USS Monterey.
