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Occupation of Japan

Japan was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II from the surrender of the Empire of Japan on September 2, 1945, at the war's end until the Treaty of San Francisco took effect on April 28, 1952. The occupation, led by the American military with support from the British Commonwealth and under the supervision of the Far Eastern Commission, involved a total of nearly one million Allied soldiers.[1] The occupation was overseen by the US General Douglas MacArthur, who was appointed Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers by the US President Harry S. Truman; MacArthur was succeeded as supreme commander by General Matthew Ridgway in 1951. Unlike in the occupations of Germany and Austria, the Soviet Union had little to no influence in Japan, declining to participate because it did not want to place Soviet troops under MacArthur's direct command.[2]

Occupation of Japan
連合国軍占領下の日本
Rengōkoku-gun senryō-ka no Nihon

 

 

28 August 1945

25 October 1945

3 May 1947

9 September 1948

28 April 1952

This foreign presence marks the only time in the history of Japan that it has been occupied by a foreign power.[3] However, unlike in Germany the Allies never assumed direct control over Japan's civil administration. In the immediate aftermath of Japan's military surrender, the country's government continued to formally operate under the provisions of the Meiji Constitution. Furthermore, at General MacArthur's insistence, Emperor Hirohito remained on the imperial throne and was effectively granted full immunity from prosecution for war crimes after he agreed to replace the wartime cabinet with a ministry acceptable to the Allies and committed to implementing the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, which among other things called for the country to become a parliamentary democracy. Under MacArthur's guidance, the Japanese government introduced sweeping social reforms and implemented economic reforms that recalled American "New Deal" priorities of the 1930s under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[4] In 1947, a sweeping amendment to the Meiji Constitution was passed that effectively repealed it in its entirety and replaced it with a new, American-written constitution, and the Emperor's theoretically vast powers, which for many centuries had been constrained only by conventions that had evolved over time, became strictly limited by law as a constitutional monarchy.


While Article 9 of the constitution explicitly forbade Japan from maintaining a military or pursuing war as a means to settle international disputes, this policy soon became problematic especially as neighboring China fell under the control of the Chinese Communist Party and the Korean War broke out. As a result, the National Police Reserve (NPR) was founded in 1950. The NPR was reorganized into the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) in 1954, effectively completing the de facto remilitarization of Japan on the orders of SCAP.


The occupation officially ended with the coming into force of the Treaty of San Francisco, signed on September 8, 1951, and effective from April 28, 1952, after which the US military ceased any direct involvement in the country's civil administration thus effectively restoring full sovereignty to Japan with the exception of the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa Prefecture). The simultaneous implementation of the US-Japan Security Treaty (replaced by the revised treaty in 1960) allowed tens of thousands of American soldiers to remain based in Japan indefinitely, albeit at the invitation of the Japanese government and not as an occupation force.[5]


The occupation of Japan can be usefully divided into three phases: the initial effort to punish and reform Japan; the so-called "Reverse Course" in which the focus shifted to suppressing dissent and reviving the Japanese economy to support the US in the Cold War as a country of the Western Bloc; and the final establishment of a formal peace treaty with the 48 Allies of the Second World War and an enduring military alliance with the United States.[6]

Background[edit]

Initial planning[edit]

American planning for a post-war occupation of Japan began as early as February 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt established an Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy to advise him on the postwar reconstruction of Germany, Italy, and Japan (Axis powers). On matters related to Japan, this committee was later succeeded by the smaller Inter-Departmental Area Committee on the Far East (IDAFE), which met 234 times between the autumn of 1942 and the summer of 1945 and had frequent discussions with two US presidents, Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.[7]


During the war, the Allied Powers had planned to divide Japan amongst themselves for the purposes of occupation, as was done for the Allied-occupied Germany. Under the final plan, however, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) was to be given direct control over the main islands of Japan (Honshu, Hokkaido, Shikoku, and Kyushu) and the immediately surrounding islands, while outlying possessions were divided between the Allied Powers as follows:

Criticism[edit]

On the day the occupation of Japan was over, the Asahi Shimbun published a very critical essay on the occupation, calling it "almost akin to colonialism" and claiming it turned the Japanese population "irresponsible, obsequious and listless... unable to perceive issues in a forthright manner, which led to distorted perspectives".[94]

Beate Sirota Gordon

Valery Burati

Cold War

1945 in Japan

Postwar Japan

Japanese economic miracle

Security Treaty Between the United States and Japan

1971 Okinawa Reversion Agreement

Shipping Control Authority for the Japanese Merchant Marine

Staff, The Pacific Rivals: A Japanese View of Japanese-American Relations, New York: Weatherhill, 1972. ISBN 978-0-8348-0070-0.

Asahi Shimbun

Barnes, Dayna (2017). Architects of Occupation: American Experts and the Planning for Postwar Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.  978-1501703089.

ISBN

(2001). Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-093130-2.

Bix, Herbert

(1993), Japan in War and Peace, New York, NY: The New Press, ISBN 1-56584-067-4

Dower, John W.

Feifer, George (2001). The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press.  9781585742158.

ISBN

(2003). A Modern History of Japan. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511060-9.

Gordon, Andrew

Kapur, Nick (2018). . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674984424.

Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo

Schrijvers, Peter (2002). The GI war against Japan : American soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II. New York, NY: New York University Press.  9780814798164.

ISBN

Sugita, Yoneyuki (2003). Pitfall or Panacea: The Irony of U.S. Power in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952. Routledge.  0-415-94752-9..

ISBN

Takemae, Eiji (2002). Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and its Legacy. Translated by Ricketts, Robert; Swann, Sebastian. New York: Continuum.  0826462472.. OCLC 45583413.

ISBN

Yoshimi, Yoshiaki (2002). Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.  9780231120326.

ISBN

in the Claremont Colleges Digital Library

American Occupation of Japan, Voices of the Key Participants

Basic Directive for Post-surrender Military Government in Japan Proper

J.C.S 1380/15

A sweet memory: My first encounter of an American soldier

Japanese Press Translations produced by the General Headquarters of SCAP

photographs documenting her experiences as secretary to the Chief of the Forestry Division, Natural Resources Section, General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, 1945 - 1949. at the University of Maryland libraries

Mary Koehler slides

photographs from the experiences of medical equipment repair specialist for the Allied Forces in 1946. At the University of Maryland libraries.

Robert P. Schuster photographs and negatives