Occupation of Japan Bertrand Roehner To cite this version: Bertrand Roehner. Occupation of Japan. 2009. hal-01708196 HAL Id: hal-01708196 https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal-01708196 Submitted on 13 Feb 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. RELATIONS BETWEEN ALLIED FORCES AND THE POPULATION OF JAPAN Bertrand M. Roehner Institute for Theoretical and High Energy Physics, University of Paris 6 Laboratoire de Physique Theorique´ et Hautes Energies,´ UPMC, Paris Working Report, 2009 Alle Menschen werden Br¨uder wo dein sanfter Fl¨ugel weilt. [All people become brothers under your tender wing.] —Friedrich Schiller, Lied an die Freude [Ode to Joy] (1785) “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” “Yes, to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” “That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes. —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Silver Blaze (1892) There is a strong family resemblance about the misdeeds, and if you have all the details of a thousand at your finger ends, it is odd if you can’t unravel the thousand and first. —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Valley of Fear (1915) RELATIONS BETWEEN ALLIED FORCES AND THE POPULATION OF JAPAN 15 August 1945–31 December 1960 (Okinawa: 1945–1972) Bertrand M. Roehner, University of Paris 6, [email protected] Version of 26 December 2015. Comments are welcome. We hope that these notes will enable us to get in touch with Japanese scholars; need- less to say, this is an essential condition for the success of this project. Please, if you happen to know people who have a working interest in this kind of historiography do not hesitate to send them a copy of the present draft. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Introduction 2 Incidents 3 SCAP Instructions (SCAPINs) 4 Censorship 5 Economy and Black market 6 Chronology, Japan, 1945-1960 7 Chronology, Okinawa (*), 1945-1972 8 Quantitative evidence 9 Conclusion 10 Appendix A: Documents 11 Appendix B: Enduring US influence after 1952 12 Acknowledgments 13 Abbreviations 14 References 15 Other occupation episodes and analytical history (*) Okinawa is treated in a separate chapter not only because it was not part of Japan during the period under study, but also due to several other special features, e.g. the extreme paucity of sources for the period 1945-1952 or the fact that the period of study is extended until reversion to Japan in 1972. Chapter 1 Introduction There is an abundant literature about the occupation period in Japan but three ques- tions of key importance have been largely ignored. • How were the occupation troops accepted and what was the frequency of the incidents between the Japanese population and the troops? • What degree of autonomy did the Japanese government have with respect to General MacArthur’s General Headquarters (GHQ)? • What was for Japan the cost of the occupation and of the reparations. On these points the reading which still prevails nowadays is not much different from the picture that GHQ tried to impose and which can be summarized by saying that: • the troops were welcomed and there were few if any incidents. • GHQ had only an advisory role and there was a friendly cooperation between the Military Government and the Japanese administration. • Japan paid only minimal reparations. How do we know what kind of picture GHQ tried to force on the Japanese? Burton Crane, a New York Time journalist, was able to examine 60 stories which were censored by SCAP (Supreme Command of Allied Powers). He found out that the Japanese were not to know how great a hand SCAP has had in shaping their future; they were not allowed to know the cost of the occupation and they were not allowed to know the plans for reparations. He concludes by saying: “SCAP’s public relations policy was to convince America [and the rest of the world] that the democratization of Japan had achieved unprecended success and that the Japanese government had furthered this process voluntarily. The first premise is debatable and the second is contrary to fact” (Lauterbach 1947, p. 50). This was written in 1947. In the 65 years that followed the State Department was able to sell the distorted historical account not only to the Japanese people and to the American public (including American scholars) but to the whole world. In short, the public relations operation was a tremendous success. No incidents? With respect to the first point mentioned above, we will see that the archive records 2 Chapter 1 which would be required in order to get a complete picture are not yet available, but that the evidence based on accessible sources does hardly support the notion of an occupation without incidents. As a matter of fact we will see that according to American military statistics there were several hundred serious incidents. Was it “friendly cooperation”? One can get a glimpse of the kind of relation which existed between SCAP and the Japanese government by considering the following cases which occurred in late 1951. • The Bureau of the Prime Minister had to get the approval of SCAP for depurg- ing any Japanese citizen. Moreover it had to ask permission for paying their pension to such depurged persons. (Chronology chapter, date of 10 September 1951) • The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had to ask SCAP’s authorization before it could give the status of permanent resident to immigrants from Okinawa. Similarly, it had to ask permission from SCAP before authorizing some of this cit- izens to travel abroad. (Chronology chapter, dates of 10 September and 4 October 1951) • The Japanese Ministry of Transportation had to get the approval of SCAP be- fore Japanese merchant ships could be scrapped. (Chronology chapter, dates of 10 September and 4 October 1951) In short, even for the smallest things the Japanese government could not act without the approval of SCAP. The subservience of the Japanese government was well recognized by people which followed closely the occupation. Thus, in 1948 Lindesay Parrott, who was Tokyo bureau chief for the New York Times from 1945 to 19551, wrote: “As the fourth year of occupation begins, all major policy still is made by the occupation authorities and even the most minor detail is checked and coun- terchecked on local levels by Military Government teams in all prefectures. Parliament remains largely a rubber stamp for the Cabinet it elects which in turn is a rubber stamp for the occupation authorities”. (NYT 8 Aug. 1948, The Week in Review, p. E4). In the following chapters (e.g. in chapters 3 and 6) we will see that this judgment is indeed confirmed by many documents particularly by the numerous instructions to the Japanese government, the so-called SCAPINs and SCAPIN-As. But, as in the case of the incidents, many documents which would allow us to get a more com- prehensive view are not accessible currently. For instance, we would need sources documenting the way SCAP instructions were enforced at the local level of prefec- 1During his years in Tokyo Parrott wrote over one thousand papers several of which are cited in the chronologysection below. Introduction 3 tures, corporations, schools and so on. According to replies that we received from their archivists, Japanese prefectural archives seem to hold very few documents per- taining to the activity of Military Government teams in their respective areas. Naturally, the aforementioned issues are related in the sense that among some dis- gruntled and defiant sections of the population opposition to reforms imposed from above translated into resentment, anger and various forms of resistance. Non-compliance with GHQ instructions or overt offenses against occupation forces were disciplined through various means: dismissals from jobs especially for govern- ment personnel or trials either by Japanese courts or by military tribunals. Prefectures and largest cities, from north to south: 01: Hokkaido, 02: Aomori, 03: Iwate, 04: Miyagi, 05: Akita, 06: Yamagata, 07: Fukushima, 08: Ibaraki, 09: Tochigi, 10: Gunma, 11: Saitama, 12: Chiba, 13: Tokyo, 14: Kanagawa, 15: Niigata, 16: Toyama, 17: Ishikawa, 18: Kukui, 19: Yamanashi, 20: Nagano, 21: Gifu, 22: Shizuoka, 23: Aichi, 24: Mie, 25: Shiga, 26: Kyoto, 27: Osaka, 28: Hyogo, 29: Nara, 30: Wakayama, 31: Tottori, 32: Shimane, 33: Okayama, 34: Hiroshima, 35: Yamaguchi, 36: Tokushima, 37: Kagawa, 38: Ehime, 39: Kochi, 40: Fukuoka, 41: Saga, 42: Kumamoto, 44: Oita, 45: Miyazaki, 46: Kagoshima, 50: Tokyo (city), 51: Yokohama (city), 52: Nagoya (city), 53: Kyoto (city) , 54: Osaka (city), 55: Kobe (city), 56: Kitakyusyu (city). Prefectures and largest cities, alphabetical ordering: Aichi (23) Akita (05) Aomori (02) Chiba (12) Ehime (38) Fukuoka (40) Fukushima (07) Gifu (21) Gunma (10) Hiroshima (34) Hokkaido (01) Hyogo (28) Ibaraki (08) Ishikawa (17) Iwate (03) Kagawa (37) Kagoshima (46) Kanagawa (14) Kitakyusyu, city (56) Kobe, city (55) Kochi (39) Kukui (18) Ku- mamoto (42) Kyoto (26) Kyoto, city (53) Mie (24) Miyagi (04) Miyazaki (45) Nagano (20) Nagoya, city (52) Nara (29) Niigata (15) Oita (44) Okayama (33) Osaka (27) Osaka, city (54) Saga (41) Saitama (11) Shiga (25) Shimane, 32: Shizuoka (22) Tochigi (09) Tokushima (36) Tokyo (13) Tokyo (city) (50) Tottori (31) Toyama (16) Wakayama (30) Yamagata (06) Yamaguchi (35) Yamanashi (19) Yokohama, city (51) In a sense the thesis that the occupation was well accepted may at first sight seem fairly plausible.