The History of Current Events
The History of Current Events
Rebuilding Japan II
After years of war Japanese cities were decimated by incendiary and the atomic bombings while the Japanese populace was on the brink of mass starvation. MacArthur now has the goal of restoring this annihilated nation and rebuilding it. With the Cold War forming what does the future of Japan hold?
Topics Covered
Potsdam acceptance
Tokyo Trial
Rebuilding Japan
Article 9 and the new constitution
China falls to the reds
Korean War
Douglas MacArthur gets sacked
Rebuilding Japan
-Nuclear Bomb Sound
-Hirohito Surrender Message-
With Japans surrender The American general Douglas MacArthur was given supreme command of allied occupied Japan. He ordered the arrest of suspected war criminals, including Hideki Tojo and Nobusuke Kishi.
Tojo when he heard the GI’s outside of his home shot himself in the chest with his pistol, attempting suicide by shot to the heart. He missed.
As he bled, Tojo began to talk, and two Japanese reporters recorded his words: "I am very sorry it is taking me so long to die. The Greater East Asia War was justified and righteous. I am very sorry for the nation and all the races of the Greater Asiatic powers. I wait for the righteous judgment of history. I wished to commit suicide but sometimes that fails."
Imperial Japan was responsible for the deaths of between 3-14 million civilians through Massacre, Human experimentation, starvation and forced labor.
with a significant portion of them occurring during Tojo's premiership and Kishi’s supervision in Manchukuo (where the infamous Unit 731 was located)
Both men would be sent to Sugamo prison in Tokyo to await Trial for crimes against humanity. in the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, or Tokyo Trial, based off the more famous Nuremberg trials which were being held at the same time in Germany.
The God Emperor Showa, better known as Hirohito in the west, the supreme leader of Japan was noticeably absent from the Tokyo Trial.
Hirohito had complete control over Japan during the war, and not just the war against the West, he allowed the Japanese Invasion of China which led to mass human suffering.
Hirohito had not only supported the attack on Pearl Harbor but showed visible joy at the news of the successful Japanese attack.
General Douglas MacArthur understood, In the state religion of Japan, Shinto Buddhism, The Emperor was a God, Japan would fall apart without their emperor and Chaos would erupt. The occupation could be trouble-free if he was left in power.
Many wanted Hirohito to be indicted as a war criminal, The Australian government one of the 11 countries sitting as judges in the trial had him listed as a war criminal and intended to put him on trial. The US government during the war likened him in their propaganda to the evils of Hitler and Mussolini. MacArthur however was in complete control.
The narrative was changed to that of Hirohito not being a god emperor but of being a puppet to the militaristic generals who Usurped Japan, Tojo among them.
As a result, any possible evidence that would incriminate the emperor and his family were excluded from the Tokyo Trial.
A Democratized American-based Japanese constitution would be created with Hirohito as a constitutional monarch but only as a figurehead.
The Monster of Showa, Nobusuke Kishi was also spared from the Tokyo Tribunal,
a group of influential Americans who had formed themselves into an "American Council on Japan" came to Kishi's aid, and lobbied the American government to release him as they considered Kishi to be the best man to lead a post-war Japan in a pro-American direction.[41
Even while still in prison he began plotting his political comeback…
Hideki Tojo during the Tokyo Trial accepted full responsibility for his actions during the war, and made this speech:
It is natural that I should bear entire responsibility for the war in general, and, needless to say, I am prepared to do so. Consequently, now that the war has been lost, it is presumably necessary that I be judged so that the circumstances of the time can be clarified and the future peace of the world be assured. Therefore, with respect to my trial, it is my intention to speak frankly, according to my recollection, even though when the vanquished stands before the victor, who has over him the power of life and death, he may be apt to toady and flatter. I mean to pay considerable attention to this in my actions, and say to the end that what is true is true and what is false is false. To shade one's words in flattery to the point of untruthfulness would falsify the trial and do incalculable harm to the nation, and great care must be taken to avoid this
The Tokyo Trial concluded with a sentence of
16 Japanese given life sentences
2 died while standing trial
1 was deemed mentally unfit
7 were hanged including Tojo
No photographs were taken as they didn’t want to antagonize the Japanese people.
Before his death Tojo apologized for the atrocities committed by the Japanese military and urged the American military to show compassion toward the Japanese people, who had suffered devastating air attacks including firebombing which had annihilated the Japanese and the two atomic bombings.[115]
Many historians now believe Tojo to have been scapegoated. Although the Emperor was guilty of many of the Empire of Japan’s crimes Hideki Tojo was given full blame.
Japan occupation
For the next 7 years Japan would be occupied and the occupation would be overseen by MacArthur. Over 1 million soldiers were involved.
During The war Japanese propaganda labeled the Americans as Baby cannibals and rapists.
Rape, it should be noted was a major problem during the Occupation period at one point the numbers of reported rapes got as high as 330 per day. This also considering the vast majority of rapes go unreported.
The wounds of Nagasaki and Hiroshima also would not be forgotten, even to this day the atomic bombings are Taboo subjects not just in Japan but all over the world.
Despite this
The Japanese were not as resistant to American restructuring of the nation as you might think,
Rinjiro Sodei, a political scientist who has written several books about MacArthur Said;
“MacArthur is seen by many Japanese as a liberator. The Japanese regarded MacArthur as the highest human being, just below god," The Blue Eyed Shogun
Japan was lucky compared to Germany which had been divided between 4 different states, the USSR, USA, GB, and France, and divided for years after the war. Japan was solely occupied, allowing for the USA to shape it into what It wanted.
Japan’s industry and cities were annihilated by incendiary firebombs which allowed the USA to completely modernize Japan’s industry. It Caused expansive growth for the Japanese economy
years and years of war had drained the Japanese and they were ready for something new
While the Germans were starving and dying in the winter of 1945 for reasons only known to Eisenhower. MacArthur told HQ that if they don't send food to Japan. They better send him bullets instead. So the US government sent wheat. The Japanese asked how do we eat it? The US occupation said bake bread with it. However they don't have bakeries in every street corner. So they turned it into ramen. And that's the story of how ramen went viral in Japan.
The Ramen fad wouldn’t take off for a few years and so Japan was on the brink of mass starvation by the end of the war. In 1946 adults in Tokyo were surviving on just 775 calories per day. The Americans were ordered not to eat any Japanese food when they landed and quickly dispensed their wartime rations to the Japanese populace.
Japan who had been stealing food exports from its colonies in China and Korea faced a severe shortage once those had dried up
It took years for the food shortages to finish
MacArthur installed an American-written constitution to replace the Meji one,
The Most controversial part of the new constitution was the notorious Article 9 which states.
“Japanese People forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling disputes”
Article 9 was thought of by a Japanese man the newly elected Prime Minister Kijuro Shidehara who came up with it while onboard a train to Tokyo. His reasoning was that the military had lost their respect of the people and keeping armed forces would make the Japanese obsessed with rearming the country.
Many in the Japanese have been trying to overturn ARTICLE 9 since the occupation, poltiicians including Nobusuke Kishi and Shinzo Abe.
The new constitution gave women rights which was shocking for the Patriarchal Japanese.
Freedom of religion was granted which destroyed state funding to the Shinto-religion, This meant that the heavily propagandized Shinto-religion would no longer be able to be used as a propagandistic tool to make the Japanese think they were the supreme race and the Emperor was a God.
The God Emperors cult was dismantled.
At MacArthur’s insistence, as part of a New Year's Day message 1946, Emperor Hirohito publicly renounced his own divinity, declaring:
The ties between Us and Our people have always stood upon mutual trust and affection. They do not depend upon mere legends and myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine, and that the Japanese people are superior to other races and fated to rule the world.
In many ways the new constitution was a punishment from the Americans, still bitter from Pearl Harbor and the Japanese brutal way of waging war, Labor Unions which had been banned in 1940 were brought back, even more radical labor unions than what existed in the USA.
Under Japan’s new freedom of Speech political prisoners were released. Including the Communists.
In 1922 the Japanese communist party was founded in Tokyo. The party was not welcomed in the increasingly militaristic and conservative Japan and was outlawed in 1925. Its members were persecuted by the “thought Police”
Upon release from prison the JCP or Japanese Communist Party Welcomed the American occupiers.
China and Korea
Although The Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki get all the credit for ending the 2nd world war. One of the major reasons Hirohito decided to step in and surrender was the Soviet invasion of Manchukuo.
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The formidable Kwantung army, which Nobusuke Kishi had spent a considerable amount of his career befriending fought bravely but had been severely weakened by troop redeployments against the Americans. The Last Chinese emperor Puyi, the puppet leader of Manchukuo was quickly captured by the Red Soviet army, it was unnecessary though. Manchukuo was a mere puppet state and fell apart within weeks of the soviet invasion.
Both the Americans and the Soviets Rushed to take as much land as possible. The Americans landed in South Korea at Incheon. And Rushed to the 38th parallel.
The Chinese Civil War had been fought intermittently since 1927. The fractured state of China had been dominated by Warlords all fighting for control of China and against the Japanese. The two most important factions were The ROC (Republic of China) AKA the nationalists, led by chiang kai shek and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) led by Mao Zedong.
Both had fought against the Japanese but the Communists were far more popular with the people due to their land reform policies and the Nationalists corruption. Despite this the nationalists controlled far more land.
When the Soviets took Manchukuo, a region which had been heavily industrialized by the Japanese, thanks in large part to Kishi. They gave it to the communists.
Both the nationalists and the communists had been fighting with whatever they could get, ranging from pre ww1 German rifles to Japanese looted equipment. The Communists now had a massive arsenal of modern Japanese armaments
The War turned against the nationalists and eventually Cheng Kai-Shek fled to Taiwan.
By 1949 mainland China fell to the communists
The Fall of China to the communists was a wakeup call for the Americans. This put not just another great power in the communist camp but the worlds largest population had suddenly gone red.
Cold war tensions began flaring
The same year The Japanese Communist Party had won 10% of the popular vote.
The USA responded by cracking down on the JCP allowing the Japanese government to purge them. Thousands of leftist intellectuals all over Japan lost their jobs. From government posts to teaching jobs to private corporations.
Stalin responded by ordering a violent revolution to be undertaken. The JCP (Japanese Communist Party) was normally a peaceful organization, given the American occupation they had no other choice. The JCP Communists began fermenting revolution.
Korea had been annexed outright as a part of Japan, but after the end of WW2 it had been divided between the two blocs, the puppet communist North and the Democratic, but not at all democratic, puppet south. Many North Koreans had fought alongside Their communist Brethren in China, they were inspired by this victory and North Korea upon Josef Stalin’s permission invaded the South… leading to the Korean war. (1950)
-INSERT TRUMAN ON KOREA
The Communists rapidly defeated the South and pushed them to a small corner called Inchon. US president Truman put General Douglas MacArthur in command of the defense of South Korea which he did masterfully. Landing an Amphibious assault at Inchon the UN forces led my MacArthur cut the Communist forces in half and started a route. He pushed the North Koreans all the way back past the 38th Parallel to the Yalu River, the border between China and North Korea. The Chinese came to the aid of their Communist Brethren and launched a massive counterattack of 300,000 soldiers.
MacArthur wanted to continue the campaign into China however Truman ordered him not to so as to prevent a war with China and possibly the Soviet Union. MacArthur was infuriated and wrote a letter in 1951 to the republican speaker of the house criticizing Truman.
Americans have a bedrock principal Keeping Civilian government and the Military separate. MacArthur had been governing Japan for the past 5 years, and perhaps he had forgotten this.
-INSERT FIRING OF MACARTHUR
MacArthur returned to the USA.
-Insert MacArthur Speech 4 minutes-
Truman’s approval rating dropped to the lowest in American History at just 22%. MacArthur was an American Hero and Legend. People began booing and Truman was hanged in effigy in several cities.
Truman Famously kept a sign with the phrase “the buck stops here” on his desk in the oval office. It would seem the posthumously popular president Practiced what he preached.
As General Omar Bradley told the senate “In the opinion of the joint Chiefs of Staff MacArthur’s strategy would involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong enemy.”
With MacArthur’s return to the USA, the American occupation of Japan was ending. The Truman administration had already been working on an end to the occupation which would result in two separate treaties being signed both on the same day
The 1952 Treaty of San Francisco, and The 1952 Security Treaty between the United States and Japan.
The Former containing Japan’s acceptance and willingness to provide compensations for its victims in the 2nd world war.
The Later containing 5 articles, which essentially made the newly freed Japan a puppet state to the Americans, American bases would stay on Japanese soil indefinitly, Japan would not be allowed to interfere in foreign disputes without US-consent, The treaty made no mention of the US to be required to defend Japan, should it be attacked.
Troublingly for many Japanese, the treaty had no set expiration date, nor did it specify any precise mechanism of abrogation.
Even after the Occupation officially ended in 1952, a total of 260,000 American soldiers remained based on mainland Japan without the Blue eyed Shogun’s leadership.
Although Japan was now an independent country it found itself chained to their former occupier in an increasingly hot Cold war that many in Japan wanted to stay out of.
The next few decades of Japanese history would be a paradoxical mix of newly acquired Freedoms and political unrest in Japan.