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Australian Participation in the Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952

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Australian Participation in the Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952 AUSTRALIAN PARTICIPATION IN THE OCCUPATION OF JAPAN, 1945-1952 By Iwane Shibuya, BA (Hons) This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Murdoch University 2015 Declaration I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at any tertiary education institution. .................................... Iwane Shibuya ii Abstract This thesis examines the Australian experience of the Allied occupation of Japan that followed World War II. Its primary focus is on what the occupation brought to Australia, rather than what Australia brought to the occupation. I analyse Australian participation in the occupation both at the level of government policy and the experience of the troops who went to Japan as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force. I argue that participation in the occupation was a key experience for the Australian government and for Australian society: it reinforced Australia's growing independence from Britain, its accommodation as a small nation with Pax Americana and the realities of the Cold War, and its creation of postwar agendas of democracy and reconstruction. The reality of the occupation experience revealed both the ambition of and the limits to these emergent national agenda. The experience of ordinary Australian soldiers in Japan, moreover, and their responses to the realities of postwar Japanese life, foreshadowed longer-term shifts in Australian attitudes to Asia. As soon as Australian soldiers arrived on the ground in Japan, however, problems arose, often in the glare of the media. Amenities for the troops were at first inadequate, relations with US forces were sometimes strained, some troops behaved badly, and the official policy of 'non-fraternisation' with the Japanese population proved difficult to implement. Such problems led initially to a significant reconstruction of the occupation, involving a building program, an expanded role for female personnel, and the arrival of Australian families to join troops in Japan. These changes reflected the Australian government’s extraordinary commitment to the occupation even as other national contingents were winding back their involvement. iii With the emergence of the Cold War, the Chifley government found less room to pursue its agenda in the international realm. Concerned about a potential confrontation with the Soviet Union that might involve Japan, it withdrew all but a small force from Japan in 1948. The latter stages of the occupation are marked by a decline in the Australian government’s expectations, a normalisation of its military and a focus on returning soldiers to civilian life in the postwar period. The limits of Australia’s role as a small power become much more evident, and the occupation experience reflected this limitation. The occupation nevertheless produced one final legacy, in the attempts by Australian soldiers to return home with Japanese war brides, at a time when the general postwar immigration program excluded Asian people. iv Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………….. viii CONVENTIONS ………………………………………………………………... xi ABBREVIATIONS ………………………………………………………………. xii TIMELINE ……………………………………………………………………….. xiii MAPS …………………………………………………………………………….. xvi INTRODUCTION ………...…………………………………………………… 1 The Chifley Government in the Aftermath of War …………………… 3 In Occupied Japan ………………………………………………………… 9 Soldiers …………………………………………………………………….. 18 Scholarly Context ………………………………………………………… 25 Primary Sources …………….……………………………………………. 30 Chapter Summary ………...……………………………………………… 33 1. AUSTRALIA AND JAPAN BEFORE 1945 ……………………………….. 36 The Institute of Pacific Relations and the Liberal Vision of Frederic Eggleston …….……………………………………….…………… 38 The Depression and Growing Australian Trade with Japan ………… 43 Australian Appeasement of Japan ………………………..…………….. 46 A Failed Commercial Treaty ………………………………….………… 49 The Cultural Impact of Japan ………………………………………..…. 52 The Defence of the Australian Nation ………………………………… 56 War with Japan …………………………………………………………… 60 Legacies of the War ……………………………………………………… 69 2. AUSTRALIA AND THE FORMATION OF BCOF ……………………. 73 Australia’s Decision to Send Troops to Occupied Japan …….…….… 74 Australia and the Machinery of Occupation in Japan ………………… 83 v Australian Soldiers and the Formation of BCOF ……………………… 91 Learning Japanese ………………………………………………………. 96 Troops Prepare for Japan ………………………………………………… 101 3. AUSTRALIANS AT WORK IN JAPAN ……….………………………… 105 Organisation of the Force ……………………………….……………… 107 Arrival of the Troops …………………………………………………….. 110 Establishing BCOF ……………………………………………………….. 120 Non-Fraternisation Policy ……………………………………………….. 125 Power and Sympathy ……………………………………………………. 135 4. CRITICISM AND REFORM: BCOF AND THE PEOPLE AT HOME, 1946- 1948 ………………………………………………………………………… 149 Anxiety about Troop Conditions ……………………………………… 149 Cyril Chambers Visits Japan ……………………………………………. 153 Australian Families in Japan …………………………………………… 163 Servicewomen in Japan …………………………………………………. 169 Whistle-Blowers …………………………………………………………. 172 Venereal Disease …………………………………………………………. 173 Crimes and the Black Market ………………………………………….. 183 Hiro Riot ………………………………………………………………….. 189 5. SCALING DOWN BCOF ………………………………………………….. 193 Changes in US Occupation Policy ……………………………………… 194 The Reduction and Withdrawal of BCOF Operations ……………….. 205 Patrick Shaw’s Trip to the BCOF Area ………………………………… 214 The US Government Request ………………………………………….. 217 6. THE END OF THE WARTIME ARMY AND THE LAST PHASE OF THE OCCUPATION, 1948-1952 …………………………………………… 224 The Later Stages of BCOF ……………………………….……………… 225 The Shifting Environment of the Occupation ………………………… 230 Postwar Reconstruction ………………………………………………… 235 Continuing the Tasks of the Occupation ……………………………… 238 Army Education …………………………………………………………. 242 vi BCOF and the Trades Training Centre ………………………………… 245 Postwar White Australia ……………………………………………….. 249 CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………………… 256 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………….. 265 vii Acknowledgements I would like to express my thanks to my supervisors, Professor Sandra Wilson and Dr Lenore Layman, for their guidance in research and writing. I owe a large debt especially to Professor Wilson for her patience and generosity in guiding me to complete this thesis. I benefited enormously from her knowledge of Japanese history and her commitment to rigorous academic scholarship, and, of course, her unsurpassed commitment to her students. I am also grateful to Dr Layman for her valuable comments and allowing me to benefit from her knowledge of modern Australian history. I would like to express my gradtude to Murdoch University for providing me with the Murdoch University Research Studentship. I would also like to acknowledge a grant given to me by the Australian Federation of University Women in Western Australia. The Japanese History Workshop, initiated by Professor Wilson with the involvement of many other scholars, gave me the opportunity to present research related papers over a long period, from which I received valuable feedback and encouragement. I am very grateful to those veterans and their families who warmly and generously accepted my request for interviews. Sadly, many of them are no longer with us. I am grateful especially to (the late) Major Arthur John, and (the late) Mr Les Oates for their encouragement and for allowing me to benefit from their close and personal knowledge of the subject matter of my research. I am also grateful to Major Foster Barton and his wife Trish for help in organising interviews with veterans in Townsville. I would like to thank (the late) Mrs Lillias O’Dea for sharing with me her unique and valuable memories of the early emergence of Japanese language education in Australia and the community of speakers with which she was viii connected. Lillias, herself a pioneer in this area, was consistently thoughtful, humourous and encouraging with regard to my project. My research could not have been done without the assistance of many libraries and archives. I would like to thank staff at the National Archives of Australia in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Thank you also to staff at Murdoch University Library, Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne, and La Trobe University Library. I also would like to thank to Major Sharryn Cook of the School of Army Education in the Blamey Education Centre, Gallipoli Barracks in Ennogera, for giving me access to the complete run of issues of Gen. I would like to give special thanks to Marguerite Wells and her family for allowing me to read and use Ken Wells’s letters sent to his family during wartime and afterwards when he was in Japan. Wells’s thoughtful and humanistic observations in his letters were an important reference point for thinking about this project. I have been helped by many people over such a long period while undertaking this project. I would like to thank Dr Beatrice Trefaul for the help and support over a long period. I would like to express my thanks to those who gave me work as a research assistant: Professor Sandra Wilson, Professor Vera Mackie, and Dr Beatrice Trefalt. Professor Alison Tokita also gave me work as a tutor in a course on the history of Japanese and Australian relations at Monash University. Thank you to Professor Robert Cribb for allowing me to use his maps for the thesis. I would like to express my thanks to Professor Chida Takeshi for discussing his experience in research and writing his
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