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Shōwa period : the American Occupation of Japan

The Surrender of Japan

Japan surrendered to the United States of America on August 14, 1945, when Emperor Hirohito accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. 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, Harry Truman and Josef Stalin had agreed on how the Allied occupation would be carried out. The Soviet Union would be responsible for North Korea, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, while the United States would be responsible for Japan, South Korea, and Japan's remaining possessions in Oceania.

On V-J Day, Truman appointed General Douglas MacArthur as SCAP, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, to supervise the occupation of Japan. Sixteen Japanese left for Manila on August 19th to meet MacArthur and be briefed on his plans for the Occupation: on the 28th, 150 American personnel flew to Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, and became the first American troops to land on Japanese soil. They were followed by the USS Missouri, which landed the Fourth Marines on the southern coast of Kanagawa.

MacArthur himself arrived in Tokyo on August 30, and immediately set several laws. No GI was to fraternize with a Japanese woman. No GI was to strike a Japanese man. No American personnel were to eat Japanese food.

On September 2, Japan formally surrendered, signing the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, and the Occupation formally began. MacArthur was technically supposed to defer to an advisory council set up by the Allies, 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.



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General MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito

Once the food network was in place, costing up to $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. With the sanction of Japan's reigning monarch, MacArthur now had the ammunition he needed to begin the real work of the Occupation.

Accomplishments of the Occupation

Disarmament

Shortly after his arrival, MacArthur ordered that all Japanese personnel give up their daito and shoto: seven tons of swords were confiscated and sent to San Francisco. MacArthur dissolved the national police force and added a "peace clause" in Japan's new constitution that specifically forbade Japan from waging war.

Liberalization

Japan's zaibatsu were dismantled by the Occupation: only their factories remained, in the hands of a wide array of corporations that eventually coalesced into what are now known as keiretsu. Five million acres (20,000 km²) of land were taken out of the hands of nobles and given to the farmers who worked them.

Democratization

In 1946, MacArthur completed a new US-style Constitution of Japan, which was actually ratified as an amendment to the old Anglo-German style Meiji Constitution. It guaranteed basic freedoms and civil liberties, abolished nobility, and, perhaps most importantly, made the emperor the "spiritual ruler" of Japan, taking away virtually all of his political powers. Shintō 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 to elect Japan's first modern prime minister, Yoshida Shigeru.

Unionization

This turned out to be one of the greatest hurdles of the Occupation, as communism had been brewing among the Japanese proletariat for several decades, and was waiting to come out in Japan's new liberal atmosphere. In February of 1947, Japan's workers were ready to call a general strike in an attempt to take over their factories, but MacArthur warned that he would not allow such a strike to take place, and the unions eventually relented, making them lose face and effectively quieting 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. MacArthur changed Japan's secondary education system to incorporate three-year junior high schools and senior high schools similar to those in the States: junior high became compulsory, but senior high remained optional. The Imperial Rescript on Education was repealed, and the Imperial University system reorganized. Even written Japanese was drastically reorganized: the Tōyō Kanji, predecessors of today's Jōyō Kanji, were selected, and grammar was greatly altered to reflect conversational usage.

Purging of war leaders

General Tojo Hideki at the War Trial 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.

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, promulgated on September 1951, marked the end of the occupation, and when it went into effect on April 28, 1952, Japan was once again an independent state.

Cultural reaction

The occupation was satirised in the 1956 American film The Teahouse of the August Moon.

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