On July 7, 1937 Japanese soldiers stationed in Beijing
conducted a night exercise near the Marco Polo Bridge.
They wanted to build a barracks in the area and often held
maneuvers to intimidate the Chinese troops.
When one Japanese soldier was reported missing,
a Japanese request to search the town of Wanping was denied.
The Japanese were deployed around the town, and in the
morning the Chinese garrison
and the Japanese fired on each other.
Chief of Staff Kanin ordered the North China Garrison
“to avoid further use of force.”
More shooting occurred at Wanping,
but two days later a local settlement was reached.
On July 11 the Inner Cabinet ordered the deployment of three
divisions from Japan, one from Korea,
and two brigades from Manchuria.
The majority approved this with the understanding it
could be cancelled if it was not needed.
The Foreign Ministry sent Nanjing terms similar to the
local settlement, but the Japanese Army insisted on the
local Chinese commander being dismissed and withdrawal
of the Chinese troops by July 19 without
withdrawing any Japanese soldiers.
On July 20 a report that the Chinese had
opened fire again led to sending the three divisions.
Kazuki Kiyoshi arrived in Beijing as the commander
of the North China Garrison on July 22.
When another clash occurred on July 25, he gave the Chinese
an ultimatum to withdraw their forces from Beijing by the 28th.
Premier Konoe spoke publicly in the Diet that Japan was
determined to bring about “a new order in East Asia.”
On July 28 Emperor Hirohito authorized the use of chemical
weapons, and Japanese troops surrounded Beijing.
After aerial bombing the city was taken two days later.
The Chinese Peace Preservation Corps at Dongzhou
east of Beijing killed their Japanese supervisors and
230 Japanese residents; but Tianjin also fell,
and the Japanese gained control of northern Hebei.
On August 8 the Japanese high command authorized
an advance into Inner Mongolia led by General Tojo Hideki.
General Ishiwara Kanji wanted to avoid war with China.
He with the Naval General Staff proposed an end to previous
agreements and special trade, withdrawal of Japanese
reinforcements, and restoration of China’s sovereignty over
Hebei and Chahar if China would recognize Manzhouguo,
form an anti-Communist alliance, and end the boycott
and other anti-Japanese activities.
The Inner Cabinet approved this proposal and sent an envoy
to Nanjing on August 7, and negotiations began two days later.
That night two Japanese marines forced their way into a
Chinese military airfield near Shanghai by killing a guard,
and they were shot dead.
Admiral Hasegawa Kiyoshi asked for reinforcements for
Shanghai, and the Inner Cabinet
approved mobilization on August 12.
The Japanese Navy pushed a “Strike South” strategy,
and Emperor Hirohito approved its priority.
Two Japanese Army divisions were dispatched to Shanghai,
and Japanese warships exchanged fire
with Chinese batteries on shore.
Two Chinese aircraft dropped bombs on the
International Settlement in Shanghai,
causing a thousand casualties.
The next day Japanese naval bombers attacked Shanghai
and Nanjing, and China ordered mobilization.
The two Japanese divisions landed in Shanghai on August 23,
but they met tough resistance
and called for more reinforcements.
All the Reserves were mobilized, and on September 9
a special Diet session approved an additional two billion yen
for military expenses in China.
Two days later an imperial order transmitted by Prince Kanin
deployed chemical warfare units in Shanghai.
Ishiwara’s restraint was over-ruled, and he was dismissed
from the General Staff on September 27.
On October 5, US President Franklin Roosevelt proposed
a quarantine on aggressive nations.
The next day the League of Nations accused Japan of violating
the Washington Treaty and the Kellogg-Briand Pact,
and they suggested that the Powers aid China;
a conference was arranged in Brussels.
In October the Japanese presented demands to China that
included recognizing Prince De in Inner Mongolia and paying
Japan reparations for the cost of the war,
but Jiang Jieshi (Kai-shek) initially rejected these.
The Navy suspected Premier Konoe’s “Strike North” strategy,
and he was excluded from the decision-making.
Japan landed five more divisions north and south
of Shanghai in early November.
On the 9th the Chinese army began withdrawing,
and their defenses gave way a few days later.
Nearly a quarter million Chinese including women and children
were killed in Shanghai while
Japan had 9,115 killed and 31,357 wounded.
The Brussels Conference ended on November 19 without
recommending economic sanctions
or even naming Japan the aggressor.
The Japanese people united behind the war,
and the Social Mass party endorsed the “holy war”
at its congress and tried to work with
the government to nationalize industries.
The Imperial Headquarters formed a coordinated plan
between the Army and Navy.
On December 2 Jiang changed his mind
about the Japanese offer.
However, General Matsui Iwane believed that occupying
Nanjing would force the Chinese to capitulate,
and so Japan made their terms more harsh.
The 200,000 men in China’s army were retreating
from Shanghai and were demoralized,
but Jiang would not give up his capital Nanjing without a fight.
General Matsui was ill, and Hirohito’s uncle Asaka
commanded the attack on Nanjing.
A surrender demand was soon followed
by saturation bombing on December 10.
Three American oil tankers and the gunboat USS Panay
were attacked by naval aircraft to block the Yangzi River.
United States
President Franklin Roosevelt
sent a note to Emperor Hirohito.
The Foreign Ministry said it was “purely accidental”
and offered generous compensation to the families
of the 17 casualties with apologies.
Nanjing fell after two days of bombing, and desperate
refugees were drowned and trampled in the panic.
Leaflets had warned that the city would suffer
“harsh and relentless” treatment if it did not surrender.
Women suffered the most as tens of thousands between
the ages of 10 and 76 were raped.
Japanese soldiers slaughtered at least 150,000 Chinese
troops and 50,000 civilians as officers
supervised the looting of homes and shops.
General Matsui led a victory parade on December 17
and reprimanded the gathered officers;
but he returned to Shanghai,
and Asaka was left in charge of the continuing atrocities.
On December 14 the Japanese set up a Provisional
Government in Beijing to replace the Peace Preservation
Committees over Shandong, Henan, southern Hebei, and Shanxi.
Tojo and the Guandong Army maintained control over
north China and Inner Mongolia,
where Prince De was supposed to be autonomous.
In Japan more than four hundred socialists were arrested
in December, and the leftist Rodo Hyogikai
labor union was disbanded.
On the 21st Japan asked China to surrender by the end
of the year, demanding demilitarized zones in northern
and central China and payment of reparations for all
of Japan’s war costs and losses.
The deadline was extended to January 16, 1938,
and on that day Premier Konoe announced that
the Imperial Government would no longer negotiate
with Jiang’s Nationalist Government.
A Reserve Bank of China replaced Chinese currency
with its own notes.
The North China Development Company and the
South Manchuria Railway controlled economic activities
with support from Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and other cartels.
In northern Shanxi the Dadong coal mines exported to Japan
at a tenth of the previous price.
The Provisional Government cut tariffs and collected
customs dues to favor Japanese imports.
The deceptively named Opium Prohibition Bureau licensed
the drug traffic to obtain its profits.
The Central China Army tried to set up the
Restoration Government, but they were called racketeers
and gangsters and were denied customs dues
in Shanghai from the international community.
In February 1938 Konoe proposed the
National Mobilization Act to use all the nation’s human and
material resources for the war.
The Diet was concerned about its five-year plan
but approved it on March 24.
At the end of March the Emperor declined Konoe’s resignation,
and they reorganized the cabinet by choosing Itagaki as
minister of War, Ugaki as Foreign minister,
and Araki as Education minister.
On April 5 Imperial orders dispatched the two armies toward
Xuzhou, and after much fighting they took over
the abandoned city on May 19.
Once again the Japanese soldiers slaughtered
the Chinese men and raped the women.
The advance on Hankou began on June 15.
Five days later Jiang disrupted this by destroying the dykes
of the Yellow River, flooding out two million residents.
From August to October the Wuhan offensive was authorized
to use the internationally banned mustard gas
against the Chinese 375 times.
The International Red Cross reported that many Japanese
soldiers had become pessimistic
and doubted they would ever see Japan again.
Although Hirohito had studied international law,
Japan did not ratify the 1929 Geneva Convention
on the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
Proof that they slaughtered the Chinese soldiers they captured
is indicated by the fact that at the end of the war
they had only 56 Chinese prisoners of war
but thousands of Western prisoners.
On December 2, 1938 Hirohito approved the “three-alls policy”
(sanko sakusen) to “burn all, kill all, and steal all.”
The historian Himeta Mitsuyoshi has estimated that the
Japanese killed more than 2.7 million Chinese civilians
in their sanko campaigns.
On July 3 Japanese soldiers took up positions near the
Soviet forces at Lake Khasan, where the borders
of Siberia, Korea, and Manchuria meet.
When Soviet troops moved forward and dug trenches on July 11,
commanders of the Korean Army asked permission to respond.
The Soviet spy Richard Sorge learned that Japan did not want
a war with the Soviet Union, but on July 29 Japan’s 19th Division
attacked the Russian positions in defiance of Imperial orders.
They were pushed back by Soviet tanks and air attacks
while Japanese pilots in Korea obeyed orders not to participate.
Vice War Minister Tojo Hideki had two colonels replaced
by Tanaka Takayoshi and Cho Isamu.
The battle continued until a truce was made on August 11.
Each side had suffered nearly 10,000 casualties.
General Blücher had wanted to fight Japan,
and Moscow recalled him in September.
In eastern Hebei the Chinese Communists used guerrilla
tactics to occupy 22 districts, and in October they stopped
the Beijing-Hankou railway from operating at night.
On September 27, 1938 Foreign minister Ugaki resigned
because he was not allowed to negotiate
with the Nationalist Government.
Japanese troops took Guangzhou (Canton) on October 21,
and four days later General Okamura Yasuji completed a
six-month drive by occupying Hankou and other Wuhan cities.
Along with Beijing and Tianjin in the north and Shanghai
in the east, Japan now controlled China’s five largest cities.
The conquering phase of the war ended as the Japanese
settled into the enduring task of occupation.
In November negotiations began between Wang Jingwei
and Doihara’s Commission.
Wang accepted the Asian Development Board that
Premier Konoe appointed on December 16 to organize
the economic exploitation of China.
Suzuki Teiichi, who had led the looting of Nanjing,
became head of its Political Affairs Branch.
Two days later Wang took a plane from the
Chongqing airport to Hanoi to begin negotiating with Japan
the forming of a new collaborating government in China.
Wang hoped to govern in the unoccupied provinces
of Yunnan and Sichuan,
but the warlords would not accept him.
Prime Minister Konoe announced that Japan
would sponsor a New Order in East Asia to help
liberate Asians from Western colonialism.
Wang Jingwei was expelled from the Guomindang
on January 1, 1939.
Three days later Baron Hiranuma replaced Konoe
as prime minister, and his hard line caused
Wang to threaten to return to Chongqing.
Hiranuma moderated his attitude
and arranged for Wang to be safe in Shanghai.
In February the Japanese Navy took over the island of Hainan,
and in March they put a base in Southeast Asia on the
uninhabited Spratly Islands that had been claimed by France.
That month General Okamura Yasuji was given permission
to use 15,000 canisters of poison gas so that his troops
would have “the feeling of victory.”
Japanese planes began bombing Chongqing in May,
killing 5,000 residents in the first two days.
Japan also tried to stop arms and income
from getting to Jiang’s capital.
In June the Inner Cabinet decided that Wang was
to represent only one in a body of constituents.
Wang told Itagaki that he did not want Japanese
advisors attached to his government.
On May 11 the Guandong Army and Inner Mongolian tribes
invaded the Soviet protectorate of Outer Mongolia
and went as far as Lake Nomonhan.
Hitler announced his military alliance with Mussolini on May 22.
Three days later Major Alfimogen Bykov counterattacked
with 10,000 Mongolians who reoccupied Nomonhan.
Hirohito sent in three divisions with 56,000 men,
and Stalin dispatched his outstanding tank commander,
General Georgi Zhukov.
Sorge’s spying gave Zhukov detailed
information on the Japanese forces.
On August 19 he attacked them with 500 tanks, 250 planes,
346 armored cars, and nearly 80,000 troops.
News of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact on August 23
caused Premier Hiranuma to send a protest to Berlin
and then to resign on August 30;
he was replaced by Abe Nobuyuki.
After his successful advance, Zhukov stopped his forces
at the Manchurian border on August 31.
Germany invaded Poland the next day,
and the British Commonwealth nations declared war.
Japan announced that they would not
“intervene in the war in Europe.”
Ambassador Togo Shigenori and Soviet Foreign minister
Vyacheslav Molotov signed a truce in Moscow on September 15,
agreeing on the previous borders.
According to official figures 8,440 of the Japanese forces
were killed, and 8,766 were wounded.
Recent research of Soviet archives found the Russians
and Mongolians had 7,974 killed and 15,251 wounded.
After this the Japanese “Strike North” strategy was dead.
On September 19 Wang Jingwei met with the puppet leaders
of the Provisional and Restoration governments,
and he was appointed chairman of the Central Political Congress.
On December 30 Wang signed the Outline for Adjusting to
New Relations between Japan and China.
Japan imposed strict censorship during the war,
and more than 500 publishers went out of business
by the end of 1939.
Each year more Japanese and foreign books were
put on the index of prohibited works.
During the first year of World War II Japan added a
quarter million men and twelve new divisions to their Army
that increased to more than a million men.
By December 1941 the Japanese military
would have 2.1 million men.
The United States had notified Japan in July that they
would not renew their commercial treaty in January 1940.
Also in July 1939 the US prohibited
the selling of airplane parts to Japan.
In October the US moved much of its Pacific fleet
from San Diego to Pearl Harbor.
Food and energy shortages and inflation caused
Abe’s cabinet to fall, and Navy minister Yonai Mitsumas
became premier on January 16, 1940.
On February 2 Saito Takao of the Minseito party gave a speech
in the House of Representatives that criticized the hypocrisy
of calling the occupation of China a
“holy war against Western imperialism” when it was really
the strong taking advantage of the weak.
His words were stricken from the Diet record,
and he was expelled.
Wang Jingwei met again on January 20 with the Provisional
and Restoration leaders to plan his collaborating government.
The Central Political Congress convened at Nanjing in March,
and on the 30th the National Government was inaugurated.
Only one third of the Congress members
belonged to the Guomindang.
On March 25 Prince Konoe recruited a hundred members
of the Diet from all parties and formed the
League for Waging the Holy War, and they advocated
an alliance with Germany and Italy.
After France capitulated to Germany in June, Japan demanded
that Governor-General George Catroux of French Indochina
allow Japanese military observers in Hanoi and stop moving war
materials to the Chinese Nationalists on the Hanoi-Chongqing
railway, which Japanese planes were already bombing.
The French ambassador Charles Arsene-Henry agreed to
recognize Japan’s “special requirements.”
Japan’s South China Army was on the border ready to invade.
A week later Japan told the British to remove their troops
from Shanghai and close the
Hong Kong frontier and the Burma Road.
Prime Minister Yonai favored cooperation with
Britain and America, and he opposed
a military alliance with Germany.
Fifty people in the right-wing Daitojuku plotted to
assassinate him and were arrested by the police in July.
When Yonai refused to resign,
War minister Hata Shinroku resigned.
The Big Three in charge of the military refused to approve
a replacement, and Yonai’s cabinet was dissolved.
Prince Konoe became premier again on July 22, 1940
with Tojo as War minister
and the “Talking Machine” Matsuoka as Foreign minister.
Five days later the Inner Cabinet met with the Army and Navy
chiefs in the Liaison Conference, and they began to plan
for a war against the British and the Americans.
On August 1 they announced their intention to found the
Co-Prosperity Sphere in Greater East Asia.
Matsuoka negotiated with Germany, and it was agreed
that Japan would decide if an attack by a third country
on the alliance required Japan’s assistance.
On September 3 Navy minister Yoshida Zengo
resigned in protest against the proposed pact.
In North China about 400,000 Communists had launched
an invasion on August 20, damaging railways, roads, industry,
mines, and the blockhouses,
but the Imperial Army was able to defeat them.
In September a Japanese mission went to Batavia to negotiate
with the Dutch East Indies to gain an additional supply of oil,
but the failure to reach an agreement led the militarists to argue
that Japan needed to break out of the ABCD encirclement
by the Americans, British, Chinese, and Dutch.
On August 30 the French collaborators in Indochina agreed
that Japan could station 6,000 troops in three airfields
on the Chinese border, and on September 13 Japan insisted
that they be allowed in the Hanoi-Haiphong area within ten days.
On the 22nd Japan moved an additional 25,000 troops to
four airfields on the Chinese border, and their South China
Army crossed the border and attacked the French garrison,
occupying northern Indochina.
An order from Emperor Hirohito
stopped the fighting after two days.
On September 25 the New York Times reported that
Germany and Japan were forming an alliance and that
Hitler wanted Japan to attack Hong Kong and Singapore.
Washington announced a loan of $25 million to the
Chinese Nationalists that day and on the next day an
embargo on all scrap iron and steel to anyone outside
the British Commonwealth and the western hemisphere.
Japan, Germany, and Italy signed
the Tripartite Pact on September 27.
In the next two weeks sixteen million Americans
registered for the military draft.
Britain reopened the Burma Road, but the United States
declined to move its Pacific Fleet to Singapore.
On October 8 the Japanese ambassador warned
Washington that future relations could become
unpredictable if trade was curtailed.
US officials had access to Japanese cables and telegrams
because by September 25 they had developed a machine to
decipher Japan’s diplomatic code.
Although one message leaked out,
the Japanese did not change their code.
Thus US access to diplomatic messages continued,
but the Americans did not have the code
used by the Japanese Navy.
Premier Konoe hoped to form a single totalitarian party
like the Nazis and Fascists.
During the summer the Social Masses party and conservative
parties had dissolved themselves, and the Minseito party
was the last to dissolve itself in August.
Konoe met with a preparatory commission of 37 prominent
leaders representing important interest groups,
but the demands of the Home Ministry alienated the others.
On October 12 Konoe and prominent national leaders
inaugurated the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (IRAA),
but too much political opposition persisted.
The Japanists complained that the reforms proposed by
Konoe and the Army would violate the imperial constitution.
So the IRAA was organized by the Home Ministry using
neighborhood associations with ten families in each to handle
practical problems and assure compliance with the war effort,
and it was called an “educational and spiritual association.”
Abe became ambassador to the new regime of Wang Jingwei
and negotiated the Basic Treaty that was accepted on August 31.
However, Tokyo leaders did not recognize the new
government because they were negotiating with Jiang
and offering him better terms.
His troops had gone back to fighting the Communists,
and the British had closed the Burma road for a few months.
Jiang used his negotiation with Japan to get a $100 million loan
and fifty fighter planes from America,
who did not want Japan free to move into the Pacific.
So Japan and Wang signed the Basic Treaty on November 30.
Japan continued its China policy of “requisitioning all materials
needed for the survival of the army.”
On December 7 the Cabinet adopted the policy of a
planned
economy while assuring entrepreneurs a role in the planning.
Also in 1940 Japan began the experimental use
of bacteriological weapons in China.
On the home front the moderate Sodomei labor union was
dissolved, and even dance halls were prohibited.
Japan made polished rice illegal, and the more nutritious
brown rice was rationed along with salt, sugar, matches,
and other necessities.
Women were forbidden
to perm their hair or wear fancy clothes.
On November 21, 1940 the Inner Cabinet decided to support
Thailand’s demands to regain territory from French Indochina,
and they supplied planes and arms to Bangkok.
On January 16, 1941 Indochinese troops pushed back the
Thais on the border and defeated the Thai fleet.
When Bangkok asked for help, the Japanese threatened
Indochina and moved two aircraft carriers,
four cruisers, and 700 marines.
Foreign minister Matsuoka asked Germany to pressure the
French, and a truce led to negotiations in February and
France’s capitulation in Indochina on March 6.
After visiting Berlin, Matsuoka went to Moscow and signed
a five-year neutrality pact with Molotov on April 13.
Japan pledged to respect the Mongolian People’s Republic,
and the Soviet Union recognized Manzhouguo.
In Washington the Japanese ambassador Nomura Kichisaburo
began discussions with Secretary of State Cordell Hull in March.
The next month Hull presented Nomura with the following
Four Principles “on which all relations
between nations should properly rest:”
1. Respect for the territorial integrity
and the sovereignty of each and all nations.
2. Support of the principle of non-interference
in the internal affairs of other countries.
3. Support of the principle of equality,
including equality of commercial opportunity.
4. Non-disturbance of the status quo in the Pacific,
however the status quo may be
altered by peaceful means.1
Japan wanted to continue trade especially for oil,
and the United States wanted the Japanese to
withdraw from China and Indochina.
On June 5 Hitler notified the Japanese ambassador
that Germany was going to invade the Soviet Union,
and the invasion began on the 22nd.
On July 2 the Imperial Conference decided to fight
the Russians if Germany was victorious.
About 850,000 soldiers assembled in Manzhouguo
near the border, but Stalin only withdrew
a few troops from the east.
On August 9 Japan abandoned the idea
of attacking the Soviet Union in 1941.
By September the German army was bogged down at Leningrad.
In his last message on October 4 before the Soviet spy Sorge
was caught, he informed Moscow that Japan was headed south,
enabling the Soviet Union to transfer troops
from Manchuria to the western front.
His informant Ozaki Hotsumi was also caught in October,
and both were hanged in 1944.
On June 6 the Dutch finally informed Japan
they would not sell them oil and other strategic
materials in the quantities they wanted.
Five days later the High Command decided
to accelerate the march south.
On July 2 the Emperor approved a document that first called
for establishing a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
To achieve this purpose preparations for war
against Britain and the United States began.
Foreign minister Matsuoka threatened to break off negotiation
with the Americans, and Premier Konoe replaced Matsuoka
with Admiral Toyoda Teijiro on July 18
in order to maintain friendly relations with the United States.
The Japanese demanded that the French Vichy government
let them move their troops into southern Indochina.
Japanese Army tanks moved into Saigon on July 24,
and four days later they had 40,000 troops in the area.
On July 26 President Roosevelt ordered the defenses in the
Philippines strengthened and the freezing of
Japanese assets in US banks.
On the first day of August the US included oil, gasoline,
and scrap metals in the total embargo on exports to Japan
that only excepted cotton and food.
Britain and the Dutch also froze Japanese assets.
Japan froze the assets of Americans in Japan and allowed
them to withdraw only 500 yen per month, worth a quarter
of the $500 a month the Japanese
could withdraw in the United States.
In 1939 two-thirds of Japan’s imports had come from
countries in the Anglo-American sphere,
and in 1940 Japan had gotten 80% of its oil from America.
On August 8 Nomura asked Hull if Prime Minister Konoe
could meet with President Roosevelt, but the latter was meeting
with Winston Churchill in the Atlantic and warned Japan
against any further encroachment into the southwestern Pacific.
Hull told Nomura that the meeting could not occur unless
Japan was willing to withdraw from the Axis Pact
and from northern China and Inner Mongolia.
In September the Japanese demanded that the United States
and Britain not interfere with Japan’s settlement with China,
not add any more military bases in Asia,
and restore trade with Japan.
In exchange Japan promised to withdraw from Indochina
and not go to war against them
if the US entered the European war.
On September 10 Hirohito gave his staff chiefs permission
to mobilize the reserves with the understanding
they would stop if negotiation succeeded.
On September 18 Konoe’s car was attacked by four right-wing
socialists, and a bullet missed his head by eighteen inches,
showing that any leader opposing war could be a target.
Two days later the Liaison Cabinet set October 15 as the
deadline for a diplomatic solution with the United States.
Premier Konoe protested and said he would resign
if the deadline was not postponed.
Seal Keeper Kido Koichi said that
Konoe was behaving irresponsibly.
On October 2 Konoe received another message from Hull
and Roosevelt that their meeting depended
on his committing to the Four Principles.
On October 14 the desperate Konoe asked the Maryknoll
bishop James Edward Walsh, who had tried to mediate a peace
agreement the previous year, to deliver a message to Roosevelt.
Konoe refused to approve the war and resigned on October 16.
War minister Tojo Hideki recommended the Emperor’s uncle
Higashikuni to be prime minister, and Konoe concurred;
but Kido and Hirohito opposed a member of the royal family
being blamed for beginning a war
because it could threaten the future of imperial rule.
They chose Tojo, and Konoe agreed.
Prime minister Tojo continued as War minister
and extended the time for negotiation.
He was also appointed Home minister for a time so that
he could control extremists if there was a diplomatic settlement.
The experienced diplomat Togo Shigenori
became Foreign minister.
Japan had not developed enough synthetic oil and calculated
that they had only two years of oil reserves
and less in time of war.
Tojo said that if Japan did nothing,
it would become a “third-class nation.”
Also the Army could not accept giving up China
because in four years they had sacrificed more than
100,000 dead and tens of billions of yen.
Japan would not give up all they had gained
in the past fifty years without a fight.
The new cabinet set the end of November as the deadline
for a diplomatic solution while the
Navy’s surprise attacks were prepared.
They developed two proposals to present to the United States.
Proposal A promised withdrawal of most Japanese troops from
China in two years except in North China, Inner Mongolia,
and Hainan; acceptance of non-discriminatory trade;
no interference by the US in Japan-China peace negotiations;
and finally Japan’s withdrawal of troops from Indochina.
Proposal B suggested that neither Japan nor the US advance
troops, that they cooperate to acquire raw materials from the
Dutch East Indies, that their commercial relations be resumed,
that the US not interfere in the Japan-China peace, and that
Japan remove its troops from southern Indochina.
Proposal A was communicated
on November 7 and was rejected.
Kurusu Saburo arrived as an extra ambassador, and he and
Komura suggested going back to the situation before July;
but Tokyo vetoed that and told them to present
Proposal B on November 20.
Joseph Grew, the US ambassador in Tokyo, warned
Washington that Japan might seize the initiative
with a surprise attack.
The United States did not accept either proposal,
but President Roosevelt and Hull suggested a modus vivendi
that included resuming trading for some oil and rice
with more later; no more Japanese troops going to Indochina,
the Manchurian border, or the south; Japan not invoking the
Tripartite Pact if the US joined the European war;
and US mediation between Japan and China.
The British vetoed this, and Hull’s final note on November 26
included the Four Principles and a non-aggression pact.
The Japanese ambassadors in Washington, Nomura and Kurusu,
asked Kido to make an appeal to prevent war;
but Kido replied that negotiating based on the Hull note
would provoke a civil war in Japan.
An imperial conference decided on December 1 to go to war
on December 8, which is December 7 in the western hemisphere.
Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku had a plan
for several surprise attacks on that day.
Yet he had opposed war with the United States because
he believed that the Japanese Navy could only prevail
for six months and then would lose.
However, years of propaganda and biased reporting had
led most of the Japanese people to believe in their empire
and its use of the military to govern in Asia.
Japan notified Germany not to expect their help against
the Soviet Union, and Hitler promised to join Japan
in the war against the United States.
Thailand was asked for free passage for Japanese troops.
On November 27 a task force with six aircraft carriers
left Tankan (Hitokappu) Bay in the Kurile Islands
and headed for Hawaii.
On November 30 Prince Takamatsu tried to persuade
his brother Hirohito to stop the war; but the Navy leaders
Nagano Osami and Shimada Shigetaro reassured the
Emperor that they would be victorious,
though not necessarily after two years of war.
Roosevelt ordered that Americans were not to start the war.
On Saturday December 6 the President also sent a telegram
to Ambassador Grew to pass on to Hirohito,
who did not receive it until after the attack.
Roosevelt’s message concluded with a final appeal to
“a sacred duty to restore traditional amity and prevent
further death and destruction in the world.”2
The Japanese planned to give the Americans a final
ultimatum at the very hour of the attack on Pearl Harbor;
but typing the message was delayed,
and it was delivered about an hour late.
However, Washington had the message
decoded four hours before that.
Japan’s notice to the British arrived 75 minutes after
their attack on the Kra Peninsula in Malaya.
Emperor Hirohito proclaimed Japan’s intention to eradicate
the source of evil and bring about an enduring peace
in East Asia to preserve “the glory of our empire.”
The Japanese knew that the US Pacific fleet had six aircraft
carriers; but three of them were in the Atlantic,
and the other three were not at Pearl Harbor.
Fuchida Mitsuo led the air raid that attacked the American ships
at Pearl Harbor at 7:55 a.m. on December 7 Hawaii time.
To indicate that the surprise was successful he sent the radio
message “Tora, tora, tora,” which means “Tiger, tiger, tiger.”
The first wave included 51 bombers, 89 torpedo planes,
and 43 Zero fighters.
The pilots had practiced their low-flying bombing runs
over a Japanese island.
A bomb down the stack of the Arizona battleship caused it
to explode, break in two, and quickly sink with 1,104 men.
A second wave of 167 Japanese planes
arrived one hour after the first.
When they returned to their aircraft carriers, Fuchida could not
persuade the commander Nagumo Chuichi to authorize
a third raid aimed at oil tanks and other targets.
While losing only 29 planes, 5 midget submarines, and 55 men
the Japanese had destroyed five battleships, three destroyers,
and 188 planes while killing 2,008 US sailors, 218 soldiers,
109 marines, and 68 civilians.
The Japanese fleet headed back to Japan.
On the same day, which was December 8 west of the
International Dateline, the Japanese attacked Malaya,
Hong Kong, and the Philippines.
Japanese planes flying from Taiwan destroyed or damaged
seventeen B-17s and thirty fighter planes
at Clark Field in the Philippines.
General Honma Masahuru led the invasion of Luzon that
began on December 22 from the north with about 48,000 troops,
followed two days later by about 26,000 from the south.
They captured Manila on January 2, 1942.
These invasions were so successful that troops were transferred
to the attack on Java which was moved up one month.
The Americans and Filipinos defended Bataan while
General MacArthur was ordered to Australia in March.
With fewer forces Honma’s army did not take Bataan until April.
The Corregidor fortress held out until May 7.
The 70,000 combat prisoners included about 11,500 Americans,
of whom more than 2,000 died on the infamous
60-mile Bataan death march.
About 16,000 Filipinos also died, and some 8,000 Filipinos
and a few Americans escaped along the way.
General Yamashita Tomoyuki led the invasion of the Malay
peninsula as about 60,000 troops in the 25th Army began
landing on the eastern coast on December 8.
Two days later the Japanese Navy sank the Prince of Wales
and the Repulse, devastating the British fleet off Malaya.
On December 21 Japan formed a military alliance with Thailand.
Japan’s 30,000 soldiers marched south and conquered
Singapore on February 15, 1942 as General Arthur Percival
surrendered the British garrison of 85,000.
Japan had lost 4,500 men and the British 25,000.
The total number of Allied troops captured in Malaya
was about 260,000.
They were imprisoned in camps for more than three years,
suffering brutality, slavery, and starvation.
The Japanese military police (Kempeitai) selected more than
5,000 Chinese hostages, and they were killed in various ways.
Japanese forces in China attacked on December 8 and took
Kowloon on the 12th.
After bombing Hong Kong, Japanese troops landed
on December 18.
The British surrendered on Christmas Day after suffering
about 4,400 casualties.
The Japanese lost 2,754 men.
Many Japanese atrocities were reported from Hong Kong,
and Foreign secretary Anthony Eden protested in the
House of Commons.
Hirohito’s advisors believed that committing atrocities fortified
the Japanese for what they had to do and persuaded them
not to surrender lest they suffer similar abuse.
Three Japanese battalions from Indochina invaded
British Borneo on December 16,
and the British surrendered five weeks later.
The Japanese invasion of Dutch Borneo captured Tarakan
on January 11, Balikpapa on the 24th,
and Bandjarmasin on February 16.
The retreating Dutch force finally surrendered on March 8.
The Japanese also moved into Ambon and the
Celebes to exploit resources and establish bases.
The Japanese forces had taken Guam on December 11
and overcame Wake Island on the 23rd.
On January 23, 1942 Japan captured the Australian airbase
at Rabaul on New Britain Island in the Bismarck Archipelago.
The Japanese also invaded British Burma in mid-January
and captured Rangoon on March 8,
one day after the military evacuated.
The Japanese took Lashio on the Burma Road on April 28
and Mandalay on May 1.
They defeated the Burma army near Kalewa on May 13.
By the end of 1942 about 10,000 prisoners in Burma
had been put to work building a railroad.
The Japanese brought in 60,000 POWs in 1943 and then
270,000 indentured Malays, Burmans, Thais, and Javanese
to try to finish the 250-mile railroad by August.
An amphibious Japanese force with paratroopers invaded
southern Sumatra around Palembang on February 14, 1942,
and four days later they captured Bali and Lombok.
The next day the Japanese attacked Timor.
On February 27 in the battle of the Java Sea the Japanese Navy
attacked the American, British, Dutch, and Australian allies who
in three days lost ten warships and 2,173 sailors.
Japanese troops invaded Java from both ends on February 28
and March 1, and the garrison of 93,000 troops that included
about 20,000 Dutch surrendered on March 9.
About 5,000 Australians, British, and Americans
were also captured.
Japan had conquered the Dutch East Indies
in less than
three months, and only a few oil wells had been sabotaged.
Japan’s War Ministry decided to leave only 21 battalions
in the south, and the remaining forces returned to the
homeland, China, and Manzhouguo.
On April 5 the Emperor appointed the former mobster
Korematsu Junichi to administer the Co-Prosperity Sphere
in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
In April the fleet commanded by Nagumo attacked the
British at Ceylon, sinking several ships
including an aircraft carrier.
On April 18, 1942 Col. James Doolittle led a squadron of
sixteen B-25s 668 miles from the carrier Hornet,
and they dropped incendiary bombs on downtown Tokyo,
killing fifty civilians and destroying ninety buildings.
Three of the planes bombed factories and oil tanks in Yokohama,
and two planes struck Nagoya.
Fifteen planes went to China, and one came down in Siberia;
twelve of the pilots bailed out with parachutes.
Of the eighty men in the raid 64 made it to Chongqing,
and five were detained in the Soviet Union.
This raid stimulated the Japanese to improve their air defenses
and to take over Nationalist air bases in Zhejiang and Jiangxi.
Japanese planes and ships sent many radio messages searching
or the Hornet, and the Americans figured out their code.
Hirohito was so angry that he broke the truce with Jiang and
sent 100,000 troops to Zhejiang, where they killed
about 250,000 Chinese before withdrawing in August.
The battle in the Coral Sea, which began on May 4
and lasted five days, was the first in history
between planes from aircraft carriers.
The Japanese sank the carrier Lexington and damaged
the carrier Yorktown, but they lost one aircraft carrier and
104 skilled pilots and were not able to fulfill their mission
of attacking Port Moresby in New Guinea.
Having deciphered the Japanese military code, the Americans
were fully prepared for the major battle at Midway Island
that began on June 4.
After numerous failed raids the Americans finally destroyed
four Japanese aircraft carriers, one heavy cruiser, 332 planes,
and about 3,500 men, including 121 ace pilots.
The United States lost one carrier,
one destroyer, and 147 planes.
Many American pilots had to ditch in the ocean
because they did not have enough fuel to return.
Midway was a turning point that ended Japanese
naval supremacy in the Pacific War.
At the same time the Japanese were attacking the American
bases at Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands,
but they would not be able to hold them in 1943.
In July 1942 General Hyakutake Haruyoshi landed forces
near Buna in eastern New Guinea and tried to march over
the Owen Stanley Range to Port Moresby;
but they suffered disease and hunger and had to turn back
in September as they were harried by Australian troops.
At home Prime Minister Tojo invoked emergency laws to
control the press, assembly, and association.
The police monitored Jews, Christians,
and the Soka Gakkai sect of Nichiren Buddhism.
The Kempeitai extended their authority beyond the military
and had 7,500 men to enforce the war effort.
In the April election the Government endorsed a candidate
for each seat and won 381 of the 461 with help from
secret funds in the Army budget.
Voter participation was 83%.
During the war the Diet usually approved
whatever Tojo proposed.
On August 7 the American marines invaded the
Solomon Islands of Tulagi, Florida, and Guadalcanal.
Two days later the Japanese gave the US Navy one of its worst
defeats ever when they destroyed four cruisers off Savo Island
and killed 1,600 Allied sailors.
Each side lost 24 combat ships in this naval campaign.
On August 18 Col. Ichiki Kiyonao landed half his 2,000 men
on Guadalcanal, and they advanced without resistance;
but in a night battle with the Americans 777 of them were killed.
On September 12 General Kawaguchi Kiyotake led his men
against Henderson Field, but for three days his charging men
were shot down by machine guns.
Four days later Japan’s commander on Guadalcanal,
General Hyakutake, was ordered to attack
the airfield again with 30,000 men.
More than 2,000 Japanese soldiers were killed charging
less than 200 entrenched marines.
His Second Division landed, but by November they were
losing two hundred men a day to starvation.
Tojo wanted to withdraw, but Hirohito would not agree.
So the War Ministry withheld supplies.
On December 31 the Imperial Conference decided to
transfer the men from Guadalcanal to Bougainville.
After losing 25,000 men, the 13,000 survivors
were not evacuated until the first week in February 1943.
The Americans had about 1,500 killed and 4,800 wounded.
The battle for Guadalcanal lasted six months, and in that time
the Japanese lost 893 planes and 2,362 aviators.
In the first year of the war US submarines sank
139 cargo vessels, 59 of them in October and November
with five times the tonnage that had been sunk
in the Pacific War before that.
Before the end of 1942 Lockheed was producing
P-38 Lightnings that were bigger, heavier,
and faster fighter planes than the Japanese Zero.
In 1943 Japan lost 6,203 planes and 4,824 airmen.
American submarines were destroying Japan’s cargo ships
faster than they could be replaced.
Japan was not getting enough supplies and food,
and other parts of the empire fared even worse.
In February the Seal Keeper Kido began meeting secretly
with former prime minister Konoe to review
the planning of a peace faction.
In April the Emperor recalled Ambassador Shigemitsu
Mamoru from Nanjing to be Foreign minister.
He negotiated with Chongqing in May and tried to assure
Jiang (Kai-shek) that Hirohito could control the military.
Prime Minister Tojo approved of the peace offensive and
suggested offering independence
and withdrawing from occupied territories.
Jiang rejected peace proposals offered through
Madame Sun Yatsen in September.
On the 22nd Hirohito met personally with Wang Jingwei,
but Wang could not persuade Jiang
to accept the Japanese terms.
The fascist Nakano Seigo, who had been secretary-general
of the IRAA 1940-41 but had quit to form the Tohokai
political group, tried to organize a conspiracy in the fall to
assassinate Tojo, Kido, and others;
but the plot was discovered, and he committed suicide
on October 25 after being released from prison.
In Tokyo on November 5 Tojo presided over the
Greater East Asia Conference that was attended by Wang
from eastern China, Zhang Zhonghui of Manzhouguo,
President Jose Laurel of the Philippines,
Thai prince Wan Waithyakon, Ba Maw of Burma,
and Subhas Chandra Bose of the Indian National Army.
Tojo promised them self-determination in 1944.
Kido learned in December that negotiations
between Wang and Jiang had been terminated.
Japan sent a convoy of sixteen ships from Rabaul in
New Britain toward eastern New Guinea,
but American planes attacked them on March 3 and sank
all eight transport ships and four destroyers.
Between April 7 and 11 Admiral Yamamoto ordered air raids
on the American airfields and warships in the Solomon Islands,
but his pilots claimed more damage than they caused.
Yamamoto took a plane to visit them and died on April 18
when it was shot down over Bougainville Island.
The Allies began to attack the Aleutian Islands on May 11.
Almost all of the 2,500 Japanese soldiers on Attu fought to
the death before the garrison was destroyed on May 29.
However, 5,600 Japanese evacuated Kiska
before 35,000 Allies arrived in August.
In early June the Americans landed on New Georgi
in the Solomons, and 10,000 Japanese held out
for nearly three months.
General MacArthur directed the attack
on eastern New Guinea in June.
The Allies adopted the strategy of moving on without
defeating all the Japanese who were left without supplies.
Bougainville was the last major Solomon Island that Japan held,
and the Americans attacked it on November 1.
The Japanese Navy withdrew from the Solomons
before the end of the year, but the fighting on Bougainville
continued in March 1944 when the Japanese lost 5,469 men
and the Americans had 263 killed.
General Robert Eichelberger led Americans and Australians
advancing along the New Guinea coast and took Buna
on January 2, 1944.
Americans suffered 11,300 casualties while about
50,000 Japanese troops in western New Guinea and about
55,000 in eastern New Guinea were bypassed
and left isolated without supplies.
Of the 140,000 Japanese on New Guinea
only 13,000 survived to surrender at the end of the war.
Admiral Chester Nimitz commanded the attacks
on the Gilbert Islands in November 1943.
A thousand Americans died in the four-day battle for Beti
on Tarawa while all the 4,800 Japanese marines were being killed.
Bypassing fortified atolls, Nimitz landed 41,000 US troops on
Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands on February 1, 1944.
In three days they killed 7,780 Japanese while losing 372 men.
In capturing Eniwetok 195 of the 8,000 Americans died;
2,677 Japanese were killed,
and only 64 allowed themselves to be captured.
The heavily fortified Truk in the Carolines was bombed by
American planes on February 18, and
50,000 Japanese soldiers there were isolated from supplies.
MacArthur captured Admiralty Island in March and made
Seeadler Harbor a naval base for repairing ships.
In April his men attacked Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea,
and less than a thousand survived of the 11,000 Japanese;
they also lost 300 planes and two destroyers.
After a year of preparation, in March 1944 the Japanese
launched an offensive with 155,000 men against Imphal
in Assam, hoping to invade British India with Indian recruits
Subhas Chandra Bose got from the prison camps.
They lacked supplies and were bogged down by monsoons;
by June the Allies had retaken Kohima.
The Japanese forces finally began to withdraw in July;
30,000 died, and 42,000 were sick or wounded.
Allied losses were 17,000 British and Indians.
In April a Japanese offensive in China opened up the
Beijing-Hankou railway in the south,
and the northern and central fronts joined in May.
That summer the Japanese armies took over Changsha
and the American air base at Hengyang in Hunan.
By November they had taken over four more US air bases,
but the B-29 base at Chengdu in Sichuan continued
to be used by the long-range bombers.
US General Joseph Stilwell commanded a counteroffensive
in northern Burma to capture Myitkyina while a
Chinese army from Yunnan took Bhamo.
Then the Allies could use the Burma Road
to move supplies into China.
Admiral Kogo Mineichi tried to keep the Allies out of the
Philippine Sea, but in March he was also killed in a plane crash.
Admiral Toyoda Soema organized the First Mobile Fleet
with nine aircraft carriers, five battleships, 450 carrier planes,
and 1,000 planes from bases on islands.
On May 27 Americans assaulted the tiny island of Biak
north of western New Guinea where
they killed 10,000 Japanese and lost 460 men.
The Japanese were determined to regain this airfield that
dominated the Strait of Malacca and the Makassar Channel,
and they lost many valuable pilots trying to do so.
In June the US Fifth Fleet approached the Marianas with
535 combat ships and transports carrying 127,571 men.
Admiral Toyoda moved his warships
from Biak to the Marianas.
Allied planes bombed the Marianas for three days.
After naval bombardments of Saipan,
the marines began landing on June 15.
Japan had 31,629 men defending Saipan,
but they were not well armed.
On June 19 Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo commanded
four air attacks by the First Mobile Fleet.
On that day US planes bombed the Japanese airfield on Guam.
American submarines sank Ozawa’s flagship
and an aircraft carrier.
The Japanese fleet fled north, but the Allied task force
led by Admiral Raymond Spruance in two days
sank three aircraft carriers and damaged four others.
Japan lost 476 airplanes and 445 pilots while the
United States lost 130 planes and 76 aviators.
Admiral Nagumo committed seppuku, and by July 9
the Japanese garrison on Saipan had lost 23,811 men.
About 10,000 Japanese civilians were also killed
while 10,258 civilians and 921 Japanese soldiers were captured.
The Americans lost 3,426 of their 67,451 troops on Saipan.
Next the Allies attacked nearby Tinian,
using tanks of gasoline and napalm for the first time.
Guam was invaded on July 21 with 55,000 US troops
fighting 20,000 Japanese, of whom half were
killed in three weeks and 8,500 in the next year.
Only 1,250 Japanese surrendered,
and the Americans lost 1,435 men.
On July 24 Tinian was invaded by 15,614 US Marines,
who killed 5,000 Japanese soldiers in a week
while losing 389 men and taking 252 prisoners.
The Tinian airstrip was taken over
and used for long-range bombers.
Emperor Hirohito had persuaded Premier Tojo not to quit,
but after losing some political struggles
he resigned on July 18, 1944.
General Koiso Kuniaki, who had been governing Korea,
became prime minister with Admiral Yonai Mitsumasa
as his deputy and Navy minister.
Koiso tried to reach out to the Soviet Union,
but on November 7 Stalin condemned Japan as an aggressor.
Koiso also hoped to negotiate with Miao Bin in Nanjing,
but Foreign minister Shigemitsu warned that
he was not reliable, and Kido persuaded the Emperor.
In September and October the Allies attacked the Palau Islands
and took over the Japanese bases at Peleliu and Angaur.
On October 12 a US task force of 1,068 planes supported
by B-29s from China attacked the Japanese air force in Taiwan,
destroying more than 500 planes.
They also bombed the Japanese airfields on Mindanao
and in the East Indies.
The US armada moving toward the Philippines with 840 ships
had 1,600 planes on 47 aircraft carriers,
and as many bombers and long-range fighters
came from China, Tinian, Morotai, and Peleliu.
General MacArthur landed 60,000 troops on the Philippine island
of Leyte on October 20, and 140,000 more would follow.
That summer 80% of the Japanese ships going to
the Philippines had been sunk.
On October 23 began the biggest naval battle in history.
American submarines sank two heavy cruisers including the flagship
of Admiral Kurita Takeo, who escaped to the Yamato battleship.
The gigantic Musashi battleship was sunk the next day.
Admiral Ozawa managed to lure Admiral William Halsey’s
Third Fleet to the north, but Ozawa lost three aircraft carriers,
a destroyer, and 280 planes in one day.
Admiral Thomas Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet ambushed
Nishimura Shoji’s task force in the Surigao Strait.
In addition to four battleships and four carriers,
in the six-day battle the Japanese lost thirteen cruisers,
eight destroyers, and six submarines.
Of the 55,000 Japanese soldiers fighting for Leyte
about 49,000 were killed.
The first two kamikaze attacks were made against US ships.
After the Leyte defeat the Japanese released thousands of
balloon bombs that were intended for North America.
By March 1945 they had released about 9,300,
but only a few came down in the United States
and did very little damage.
In 1944 Japan produced about 18,000 planes even though
their plan was for 40,000.
By the end of the war the United States
would have 40,893 planes and sixty aircraft carriers.
The campaign for the Philippines was the
climactic battle of the Pacific War.
US forces landed on Mindoro Island on December 15,
and by January 1945 about 174,000 troops had landed on Luzon.
General Yamashita tried to make a stand north of Manila
with 275,000 troops while Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi ordered
21,000 soldiers to fight to the death for the city.
General MacArthur did not use aerial bombing in order to prevent
civilian deaths in Manila, but heavy artillery was used.
After two months of fighting and the death of nearly
100,000 civilians, the Americans took Manila on February 24, 1945.
Yamashita’s men ran out of supplies and tried to live off the land
and moved into the mountains.
The fighting continued until Japan surrendered in September.
Japan lost 9,000 planes and much of its Navy.
The number of Japanese killed in the Philippines was 336,352,
and 12,573 were captured.
The Americans had 13,973 killed and 48,541 wounded.
US Marines attacked Iwo Jima on February 19
and declared it secure on March 16.
They had 6,821 killed and 19,189 wounded;
the Japanese garrison of 21,000 had 20,703 killed
as only 216 surrendered.
Americans began invading Okinawa on April 1, 1945 with
a force that would total 548,000 soldiers
before the battle was won in the middle of June.
On April 6 Japan launched a desperate counter-attack
with 341 bombers and 355 suicide planes.
About 200 kamikaze pilots reached Okinawa,
and 135 were shot down.
Those hitting targets sank two destroyers and four other ships
and damaged eighteen others.
The next day the colossal Yamato was sunk,
going down with about 2,500 men.
About 5,000 US sailors were killed by kamikaze attacks
that sank 34 ships and damaged 368 others
in the Okinawa campaign.
Only four destroyers returned to Japan
as its Navy was devastated.
On June 21 General Ushijima Mitsuru
and his chief of staff committed suicide.
In the battle of Okinawa 62,500 Japanese combatants
were killed along with about 150,000 Okinawan civilians;
7,455 Japanese soldiers surrendered.
The Americans had 12,513 killed or missing
and 38,916 wounded.
The United States lost 79 ships and 763 planes.
Japan also lost 3,130 planes and had few left.
General Curtis LeMay, who had planned the strategic bombing
of Hamburg, took over the bombing operations in the
Mariana Islands in January 1945 and became concerned that
the high explosives that had devastated German industries
were not as effective in Japan, where two-thirds of industry
was dispersed in homes and small factories.
On the night of February 24 the US Air Force launched
174 B-29s in the first incendiary air raid on Tokyo
that devastated about one square mile.
Then LeMay ordered the pilots to fly at low altitudes of less than
8,000 feet with fewer guns in order to carry more bombs.
On the night of March 9 the 279 B-29s doing this dropped
1,700 tons of bombs that contained a mixture of oil, phosphorus,
and napalm, killing about 90,000 people
and burning sixteen square miles, a quarter of Tokyo.
The next night LeMay sent 313 bombers with napalm
to attack Nagoya, Japan’s third largest city.
That week 45 square miles of industrial areas were burned.
In April B-29 raids bombed the Nakajima aircraft factory twice,
the Koizuma aircraft factory, arsenals, and urban areas.
After Germany surrendered on May 8, the United States
shifted more forces to the Pacific War.
On May 23 a raid by 520 B-29s bombed the industrial area
south of the Imperial Palace,
and two days later Tokyo was hit again by 564 B-29s.
Yokohama was attacked by 450 bombers on May 29.
The United States had about eighty times the industrial
resources of Japan, which had to import many raw materials.
As the war progressed, the American
advantage became overwhelming.
In the first year Japanese shipping lost 1,250,000 tons,
in the second year 2,560,000 tons,
and in the third year 3,484,000 tons.
In 1941 Japan had 4,468,000 metric tons of scrap iron and steel,
but by 1944 this had dwindled down to 449,000.
Japan’s store of oil was 48,893,000 tons in 1941,
but in early 1945 only 4,946,000 remained.
Coal, bauxite, and other metals also diminished.
In four years Japan produced 58,822 planes by the end of 1944
while the United States manufactured 261,826 aircraft.
Japan began the war in 1941 with
2,400,000 men in the armed forces.
This was increased to 3,980,000 by February 1944
and to 5,360,000 by the end of the year.
At the end of the war Japan had 7,190,000 in the armed forces.
Women, students, and Koreans were mobilized to work
in factories, and farms were left to women, children, and old men.
In 1944 rice imports were 30% of normal and in 1945 only 11%.
Bad weather caused a 27% drop in
domestic production of rice in 1945.
The average daily consumption of calories in Japan
had dropped from 3,400 before the war to 1,600.
On April 5, 1945 Molotov informed the Japanese ambassador
in Moscow that the Soviet Union
would not renew the neutrality pact.
That day Hirohito replaced Premier Koiso
with the 78-year-old Admiral Suzuki Kantaro.
His war policy emphasized the suicidal tactics of the kamikaze
pilots, human torpedoes, crash boats, and ground charges.
About 10,000 planes were converted from training and
other uses to be packed with explosives for suicide missions.
The IRAA national organization was dissolved in June and
was replaced by the People’s Heroic Fighting Corps,
which lasted only two months.
On June 8 Kido gave the Emperor a plan to ask the
Soviet Union to mediate a peace agreement, and the next day
the Diet passed the Wartime Emergency Measures Law
and other bills to mobilize Japan to defend the homeland.
B-29s dropped millions of leaflets written in Japanese calling
on the people to appeal to the Emperor for peace.
On June 22 Hirohito directed the Supreme War Leadership
Council to begin negotiating an end to the war,
and the Army leaders reluctantly agreed.
The Soviet ambassador Jacob Malik broke off talks
with the former prime minister Hirota in early July.
On July 26 US President Harry Truman and Winston Churchill
in concurrence with Jiang issued the Potsdam Declaration
warning that the Japanese armed forces would be completely
destroyed and the Japanese homeland devastated if Japan
did not surrender unconditionally all its armed forces.
Conditions included removing from authority those who had
misled the people into attempting world conquest.
The Declaration went on.
Until this is accomplished and Japan’s war-making capacity
is destroyed, the Allies will occupy Japanese territory.
Japan must fulfill the Cairo Declaration by returning Manchuria,
Taiwan, the Pescadores and other territory to the
Republic of China and by allowing
Korea to be free and independent.
“Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu,
Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku
and such minor islands as we determine.”
Japan’s military forces must be completely disarmed.
The Allies promised “stern justice” to all war criminals and
democracy for Japan, which must establish freedom of speech,
religion, thought, and human rights.
Peaceful industries will be permitted to enable payment
of reparations, and eventually trade relations will be allowed.
Once the objectives are attained and after Japan has a
responsible government, the occupying forces will withdraw.
The concluding sentence warned,
“The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.”3
On July 28 at a press conference Premier Suzuki said that Japan
would ignore the Potsdam offer and press forward with the war.
On the first two days of August 766 B-29s bombed Nagaoka.
By then sixty Japanese cities had been devastated by
6,960 B-29 sorties dropping 41,592 tons of bombs.
Half of Tokyo, Kobe, and Yokohama had been destroyed along
with 40% of Osaka and Nagoya and 90% of Aomori.
The Allies had refrained from bombing Hiroshima;
but on August 4 they dropped 720,000 leaflets warning that this
city and others would be obliterated
if Japan did not surrender at once.
On August 6 at 8:15 a.m. while many were cooking their
breakfasts, the first atomic bomb used in war was dropped on
Hiroshima with the explosive power of 12,500 tons of TNT.
According to the US Government this was the first time that
a uranium bomb had ever been exploded, the only official test
on July 16 having been a plutonium bomb.
The blinding light and searing heat burned tens of thousands,
immediately killing about 70,000 people
out of a population of 255,000.
The effects of the burns, disease, and radiation would cause
about 20,000 to 50,000 more to die by the end of the year.
Estimates of the total number who died as a result of the bomb
have been estimated at 200,000.
The industrial city of Hiroshima had 80%
of its buildings destroyed by one bomb.
On August 8 more leaflets were dropped,
and radio warnings were given.
On that day the Soviet Union declared war on Japan,
and their army of a half million men invaded Manchuria
in four
places with 500 planes, 3,700 tanks, and 26,000 artillery guns.
Before much of the Guandong Army could mobilize,
the war was over.
The Russians and the Chinese seeking revenge killed
83,737 Japanese soldiers and took 594,000 prisoners.
Weather considerations caused the bombing of Nagasaki
to be moved up two days to August 9.
A plutonium bomb was dropped at 11:01 a.m. and exploded
with the power of 21,000 tons of TNT, killing about 35,000
immediately and eventually about 74,000
of the 200,000 people in the city.
The bomb exploded in the air midway between the
Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works and the
Mitsubishi-Urakami Torpedo Factory.
Hills between the industrial area targeted and the civilian
population prevented as many human casualties as at
Hiroshima despite its greater power.
Nagai Takashi had been studying radiation,
and his wife was killed.
He wrote Leaving These Children and The Bells of Nagasaki
before dying of radiation sickness in 1951.
Like many in Nagasaki, he was a Christian, and he considered
these two atomic bombings a warning
by God to wake up humanity.
The Japanese cabinet was concerned about the sovereignty of
the Emperor, but Hirohito accepted the terms of the Potsdam
Declaration with the proviso that the sovereign ruler’s
prerogatives were not prejudiced.
US Secretary of State James Byrnes replied that the Emperor
and the Japanese government would be subject to the
Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers and that ultimately
the government would be “established by the freely expressed
will of the Japanese people.”
Minister of War Anami Korechika and Privy Council
President Hiranuma persuaded Premier Suzuki that this violated
Japan’s national polity (kokutai); but Foreign minister Togo and
Kido convinced Suzuki to accept their
interpretation of the US offer.
Hirohito said he would not allow his people to suffer any more,
and they agreed to the Allied terms on August 14.
That day 828 B-29s bombed Tokyo again without losing a plane,
and Truman’s announcement of the surrender
was made before they returned to their bases.
Major Hatanaka Kenji was trying to organize a coup;
but Anami did not think it would work
and committed seppuku that night.
Hatanaka and other officers could not persuade
General Mori Takeshi of the Imperial Guard and killed him.
They forged an order in his name and tried to destroy the
recording made by the Emperor and took over the
Radio Broadcasting House, but Hatanaka was thwarted in
his attempt to speak on the radio.
He and Col. Shiizaki Jiro killed themselves with a pistol.
General Tanaka Shizuichi, the commander of Tokyo Defenses,
fulfilled his duty and then committed seppuku.
On August 15 the Japanese people heard the voice of their
Emperor for the first time on radio as they learned that the
empire had accepted the Joint Declaration
and that the war was over.
Hirohito explained that a new bomb meant that continuing to
fight would cause the complete collapse and obliteration of the
nation and even “the total extinction of human civilization.”
Prime minister Suzuki resigned that day and was replaced by
Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko on August 17.
Several high-ranking officers and more than 500 military
personnel committed suicide after the surrender was announced.
The surrender order was read to the chiefs of staff in Manchuria
on August 18, and the Guandong Army
was dissolved by September 17.
Higashikuni appointed Konoe vice prime minister and
newspaper publisher Ogata Taketora cabinet secretary.
They both acted to legitimize the Emperor’s actions and to
prepare for the arrival of the Americans and British.
Higashikuni also spoke on radio on August 17 to assure the
people that his government would act
“in accordance with the imperial will.”
He encouraged constructive discussions
and freedom to form healthy associations.
The Americans and British Commonwealth troops were
considered well disciplined during the war and had committed
few rapes, but this changed during the occupation.
In the first twelve days of the occupation Japanese women
reported 1,336 cases of rape by US soldiers in the Kanagawa
prefecture that includes Yokohama and Yokosuka.
US records indicate that only 247 US soldiers were prosecuted
for rape in the last half of 1945,
and that included Europe as well as Asia.
Concerned about rape, violence, and miscegenation,
Konoe suggested organizing prostitutes for the Allied soldiers,
and on August 21 Higashikuni approved the Home Ministry
setting up the Recreation and Amusement Associations
with Government funding.
Women were urged to volunteer for the good of the nation,
and 1,360 women had enlisted in Tokyo by August 27.
By the end of the year 20,000 women were working
for the RAA, which reached a peak of 70,000 women before
it was disbanded on March 27, 1946
because of spreading venereal disease.
Many RAA women “comforted”
between 15 and 60 GIs each day.
On August 17 the Japanese government sent out an urgent
memo ordering that all confidential documents and incriminating
evidence be burned immediately.
During the two weeks before the Occupation forces arrived,
massive theft of government supplies also occurred,
and a black market quickly developed.
The Ministry of Munitions was changed back to the
Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
Ishiwara Kanji, who led the millenarian East Asia League
(To’A renmei), blamed the defeat on people’s morals
and urged repentance.
He advised disarmament, ending restrictions on speech
and ideas, and following American ways.
The Buddhist Tanabe Hajime had similar views and in 1945
wrote Philosophy as the Way of Repentance,
which was published in April 1946
as the Tokyo tribunal was beginning.
On September 2 Foreign minister Shigemitsu and
General Umezu Yoshijiro formally signed the surrender document
with General MacArthur on the battleship Missouri.
MacArthur expressed hope for a better future and warned that
humanity needs to “devise some greater and more equitable
system” than the “utter destructiveness of war”
in order to avert Armageddon.
He suggested that a “spiritual recrudescence and improvement
of human character” that could match the advances in science,
art, and literature will enable the spirit to save the flesh.
He intended to demobilize the Japanese armed forces to
neutralize the war potential so that Japan could return
its talents into constructive channels.
During the Pacific War the Japanese armed forces had about
1,565,000 men killed and at the end categorized 4,470,000 men
as wounded or ill.
Japan also had 480,000 troops killed in the China War 1937-41.
About 393,000 Japanese civilians were killed in air raids,
and about 500,000 civilians died in war zones.
An estimated nineteen million Chinese also died in China
during that long war.
Of the 132,134 Allied troops from Britain, the Netherlands,
Australia, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand that
the Japanese held as prisoners, 35,756 died
before the others were released.
The United States military lost 100,997 dead
and had 190,546 wounded in the Pacific War.
President Truman appointed General Douglas MacArthur the
Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP),
and he arrived on August 30, setting up his
temporary headquarters in Yokohama.
After presiding over the surrender ceremony on September 2
he ordered that all of Japan was to be under military law.
Foreign minister Shigemitsu in an interview with MacArthur
and his Chief of Staff Richard Sutherland the next day suggested
that this would likely cause chaos unless the Japanese
Government had responsibility to carry out Occupation policy.
MacArthur, who was given the same advice by the US
Government, adopted the recommendation.
The Far Eastern Commission met in Washington with eleven
members from the Allied nations; but if they did not agree,
the United States Government had the power to act on its own.
The Allied Council in Tokyo had four representatives from the
United States, Britain, China, and the Soviet Union,
but they did not meet until December 27 and were only advisory.
The Soviet representative often criticized SCAP.
The American costs of the occupation were paid for by the
Japanese government and were almost a third of its budget.
The two main goals of SCAP were
demilitarization and democratization.
Japan’s military equipment and installations were destroyed,
and the remaining navy vessels were divided
among the four main Allies.
The US military demobilized 3,700,000 Japanese troops
in Japan as SCAP directed Japanese commanders
to disarm their own soldiers.
By the end of 1947 mostly American ships had transported
most of the 3,300,000 Japanese troops and 3,200,000
Japanese civilians from the territories
they no longer occupied back to Japan.
In central China epidemics of smallpox, typhus, and cholera
broke out in the spring of 1946 and delayed repatriation.
About one million Japanese were returned from the
Soviet Union by the end of 1949,
but about 300,000 were missing.
Records made available after the collapse of the Soviet Union
indicate that about 500,000 Japanese war captives
died
in their forced labor camps.
Jiang encouraged the Chinese to treat their former enemies as
friends because he wanted them as allies
in his civil war against the Communists.
Most of the 1,350,000 Koreans were repatriated, but some
preferred to go to or stay in Japan rather than
return to their divided nation.
Returning veterans were often despised, and many resented
the harsh treatment they had received
from their officers during the war.
They were on their own because the Government
was forbidden to pay them any pensions.
The physical situation of Japan at the end
of the war was wretched.
They had lost 80% of their shipping, 30% of their industrial
capacity, and 30% of their thermal power.
Japan’s industrial production was at 10% of its prewar level.
The Japanese empire was defeated,
and the nation returned to its four main islands.
The United States was administering Okinawa.
The Soviet Union wanted to occupy Hokkaido,
but MacArthur vetoed that.
Thus unlike Germany and Korea, Japan was not divided.
Rice was 32% below prewar production,
and fishing was down 40%.
Official food rations provided each person
with only 1,050 calories per day.
People had to acquire food from the black market to survive.
One Tokyo judge died of malnutrition because
he would not break the law.
MacArthur immediately set up a food distribution network
and cabled Washington to send 3,500,000 tons of food.
When confronted with bureaucratic delays, he cabled back,
“Give me bread or give me bullets.”5
The cost of living rose about ten percent a month for two years,
and by the end of 1949 the consumer price index had multiplied
to 240 times the pre-war level.
Millions of people in Japan had their homes destroyed by the
bombing, and many lived in shanty towns or were homeless.
In February 1948 the number of orphaned
and homeless children was 123,510.
The Higashikuni cabinet had begun demobilizing the Army
and Navy before the Americans arrived.
At a press conference on September 4 he urged national
repentance and praised the Emperor for
ending the suffering of the war.
Higashikuni admitted that the main reason for Japan’s defeat
was that its enemies had much more war power;
but this made many people feel that their leaders had foolishly
led them into a war against the United States and Britain.
On September 6 President Truman’s advice to use existing
government structures arrived.
SCAP abolished the Imperial Headquarters on September 13.
MacArthur moved into the General Headquarters (GHQ) in
central Tokyo opposite the Imperial Palace on September 17.
GHQ had about 35,000 civilian administrators in Government,
Civil Information and Education,
and Economic and Scientific sections.
The next day MacArthur began receiving the secret instructions
from the Truman administration for the reform of Japan.
The Americans decided to use the Emperor’s sway over his
people for their purposes, and Operation Blacklist was the plan
for blaming the militarists rather than the Emperor.
On September 25 Hirohito granted interviews to
Frank Kluckholm of the New York Times and
Hugh Baillie, president of United Press, in which he emphasized
his support for democracy and pacifism while he avoided
questions about Pearl Harbor, which he blamed on Tojo.
Two days later Hirohito went to see MacArthur,
and in a private meeting they seemed to form a
working relationship for cooperation.
MacArthur was surprised and impressed that the Emperor
accepted “sole responsibility for every political and military
decision made and action taken
by my people in the conduct of war.”6
Later MacArthur gave Hirohito credit for playing
“a major role in the spiritual regeneration of Japan.”
The main post-war prime minister Yoshida believed that not
prosecuting and executing the Emperor was the greatest
single factor that made the occupation a success.
On October 4 MacArthur issued a civil liberties directive that
abolished the Peace Preservation Law, the National Defense
Security Law, and the special higher police.
Learning that several thousand officials would be dismissed,
the Higashikuni cabinet resigned in protest the next day.
Three days later MacArthur imposed censorship
on Tokyo newspapers and radio.
He approved the Emperor’s choice of 74-year-old
Shidehara Kijuro as prime minister.
On October 10 display of the sun flag was banned,
but people were allowed to sing the national anthem “Kimigayo.”
The next day GHQ freed about five hundred political prisoners,
mostly Communists, and announced the “five great reforms”
that would emancipate women, promote labor unions,
and democratize politics, education, and the economy.
Political parties began to organize, and Communists could
criticize the Emperor publicly.
On October 22 GHQ dismissed all teachers who had
advocated militarism or opposed occupation policies.
The issue of the Emperor abdicating was discussed,
but it was argued that he was needed to carry out
the Potsdam Declaration.
GHQ revealed that Hirohito’s financial assets
were more than 16 billion yen.
He went on a tour by train and began to meet the people.
GHQ began breaking up the huge zaibatsu
conglomerates in early November.
The chief holding companies were required to sell their stocks
to the public, beginning the Tokyo stock exchange.
Later an anti-monopoly law was passed that prohibited trusts,
cartels, interlocking corporate controls,
and agreements restraining trade.
Agrarian land reform was also initiated.
In the first purge of the Diet the Progressives lost about 93%
of their seats and the Liberals about 45% of theirs.
The Diet had 16% of its members purged compared to 80%
of military officers and less than 1% of civil servants.
Weapons research was banned.
The Japanese atomic program was abolished,
and scientists were arrested.
All five cyclotrons were destroyed in November even though
MacArthur had approved their use for
medicine, metallurgy, and agriculture.
The headquarters of the Navy and Army had been dissolved
in October, and on December 1 those two ministries were
abolished and became the
First and Second
Demobilization Ministries.
In June 1946 these ministries became
bureaus of the Demobilization Board.
Also in December the Pauley Report recommended
removing all equipment from Japan’s war industries
and reducing severely their capacities in
steel, machine tools, and shipping.
Later these punitive measures were moderated.
GHQ’s Civil Information and Education (CIE) section prepared
propaganda to persuade people that
militarism had caused them to lose the war.
“A History of the Pacific War: The Destruction of Deceit
and Militarism in Japan” was translated into Japanese,
and the first installment was published in all national newspapers
on December 8, 1945.
The articles detailed the terrible consequences of the Japanese
war crimes and blamed military cliques while the Emperor and
the people were portrayed as deceived victims.
The Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) broadcast on
radio a version called “Now It Can Be Told” for thirty minutes
three times a week until February 10, 1946.
Masunaga Zenkichi hired Mainichi newspaper reporters to
write The Twenty-Year Whirlwind: Exposing the Inside Story
of the Showa Period to reveal the secret history of the war.
The first volume covering 1926 to 1936 was published on
December 15 and sold 100,000 copies in the first week.
The second volume which went to the end of the war
was published on March 1, 1946 and soon sold more than
700,000 copies.
The Twenty-Year Whirlwind stayed
on the best-seller list through 1947.
On December 15 SCAP ordered the disestablishment of the
Shinto religion with its directive
“Abolition of Government Sponsorship, Support, Preparation,
Control, and Dissemination of State Shinto.”
After much negotiation with religious leaders SCAP allowed
some shrines to have government support as cultural treasures.
In his New Year’s message Hirohito warned the people against
“the false conception that the emperor is divine and that the
Japanese people are superior to other races
and fated to rule the world.”4
He advised people to follow the Meiji Charter Oath
of his grandfather as a better precedent.
MacArthur tried to promote Christianity and encouraged
American missionaries to come to Japan.
At his urging ten million Bibles were imported,
but the pages of many were used for cigarette papers.
Women were given the right to vote on December 17, 1945
and the voting age was lowered from 25 to 20.
In the provinces 23 women were elected to prefectural
assemblies, 74 to city councils, and 707 to town assemblies.
Wives were given the right to own property
and the equal right to divorce.
Primogeniture was abolished,
and daughters could inherit as much property as sons.
Males at age 18 and females at 16 could marry without their
parents consent, ending contract marriages and concubinage.
The high schools became coeducational,
and 26 women’s universities were started.
In January 1946 SCAP abolished “public” prostitution as a
violation of women’s rights, but by the time this took effect
months later nearly ninety percent of RAA women
were infected with diseases.
One unit in the US 8th Army had 70% of its men detected
with syphilis and 50% with gonorrhea.
In 1948 there were still 670 licensed houses of prostitution
in Tokyo and about twice that many private ones.
Birth control gradually gained popular support even though
Margaret Sanger was barred from speaking in Japan.
Abortion was legalized in June 1949.
In September 1946 the Diet passed a law increasing
the autonomy of cities, towns, and villages.
On December 22, 1945 the Diet passed a Trade Union Law
that guaranteed worker rights to organize,
strike, and bargain collectively.
In 1946 about 845,000 union members participated in about
1,260 industrial disputes as employees often demanded
participation in production management.
In September the Labor Relations Adjustment Law
established procedures for settling labor disputes.
At the beginning of 1946 the purge of about 200,000
ultranationalists and militarists from holding public office began.
The Ministry of Education had already removed or accepted
the resignations of 116,000 teachers,
and in 1946 another 6,000 were purged.
MacArthur ordered all suspect organizations dissolved,
and new organizations had to register with the government,
reporting their purposes, funding sources, and members.
On January 25 MacArthur sent a strong cable to Washington
arguing that arresting the Emperor would threaten the goals
of the occupation and cause chaos.
The imperial family’s holding company was dissolved,
and most of the fortune was given to the people.
In December 1946 eleven of the fourteen princes lost their
aristocratic positions and much of their wealth,
but the Emperor’s three brothers retained their imperial status.
In March a commission led by New York State commissioner
of education George Stoddard submitted a report to SCAP
that suggested purging militaristic and ultranationalist teachers,
revising textbooks, and altering curriculum.
They recommended nine years of compulsory schooling,
decentralized control, more colleges,
and education that encouraged students to think.
Japan adopted these proposals and the American system of
six years of elementary school, three years in junior high school,
three years in high school, and four years of college.
Public schools were put under locally elected boards.
In 1949 Japan established 68 new national universities
and 99 other universities.
Junior colleges were started in 1950.
The Japan Teachers Union was influenced by left-wing politics.
The National Student Federation was founded in September
1948 and staged demonstrations on behalf of democracy.
In April 1946 a national election was held with
2,781 candidates representing 257 parties
running for 466 seats in the Diet.
Hatoyama Ichiro led the Liberal party that was formed
from Seiyukai members and won 140 seats.
Shidehara led the Progressive party from Minseito members,
and they captured 93 seats.
Katayama Tetsu organized the Japan Socialist party,
which won 92 seats.
Tokuda Kyuichi led the Communists after being in prison
for eighteen years, and they occupied five seats.
Japanese women voted for the first time, and 39 women were
elected to the Diet, including one prostitute.
SCAP disqualified Hatoyama because of his violations
of civil liberties between 1928 and 1934.
So the Liberals chose Yoshida Shigeru to head the government;
he was acceptable because he had tried to end the war.
Yoshida would be prime minister most of the time for the next
seven years, and urged on by SCAP
the Diet passed seven hundred laws
MacArthur rejected a revision of the Meiji Constitution drafted
by the Japanese, and on February 3 he ordered the Government
section of GHQ to draft a new constitution quickly
that was made public on March 6.
MacArthur noted that it borrowed from many constitutions,
and he believed it was the “most liberal constitution in history.”
Prime Minister Shidehara said, “We must see to it that our
constitution establishes the foundation for a democratic
government and externally leads the rest of the world
for the abolition of war.”7
On January 24, 1946 Shidehara had proposed a “no-war”
article and persuaded MacArthur that in this way the Japanese
people could show the world that they would
never engage in war again.
MacArthur liked the idea and instructed the Government
section to make it one of the three essential principles
in the new constitution.
This most innovative feature of the Japanese constitution
is the pacifist Article 9 which states:
Aspiring sincerely to an international peace
based on justice and order,
the Japanese people forever renounce war
as a sovereign right of the nation
and the threat or use of force
as means of settling international disputes.
In order to accomplish the aim of the
preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces,
as well as other war potential,
will never be maintained.
The right of belligerency of the State
will not be recognized.8
In July the Far Eastern Commission insisted that
only civilians
be permitted to hold cabinet positions,
and this was eventually accepted.
After much debate the Diet adopted the new constitution
on August 21 by a vote of 429-8.
Five Communists objected to retaining the emperor,
who was referred to as
“the symbol of the State and unity of the people.”
The people are sovereign and elect both houses directly.
The lower House of Representatives may over-ride the
upper House of Councilors with a two-thirds majority.
The prime minister has to be a member of the Diet
and is elected by the upper house.
Civil rights are expanded to include “minimum standards
of wholesome and cultural living,” and the State is obligated to
promote and extend social welfare, security, and public health.
The right to education is guaranteed along with labor rights
and the equality of husband and wife.
The judiciary is independent, and the Supreme Court
has the power to supervise lower courts and decide
which laws are constitutional.
The jury system was not adopted.
Article 14 ended the titles and privileges of peers,
and the Socialists got this to take effect immediately
rather than merely banning future patents of peerage.
In October 1946 the Diet passed the Farm Land Reform Law
that prohibited absentee landlords.
A landlord living in the community could own up to 2.5 acres,
and a farmer could utilize a maximum of 7.5 acres
and own another 2.5 acres.
Government purchased land and sold it to former tenants
with 3.2% interest over thirty years.
Land transfers were managed by 13,000
locally elected land commissions.
In 1947 the Agricultural Cooperative Union Law helped
farmers work together in unions.
By 1950 about 2,340,000 landowners had sold to
about 4,750,000 tenants and farmers 2,800,000 acres
of rice land and 1,950,000 acres of upland.
The Government also redistributed
600,000 acres of pastureland.
The percentage of farmers who were tenants
dropped from 28% in 1941 to less than 8%.
During the land reform three-eighths
of the agricultural land changed owners.
In January 1947 several unions dominated by the Communists
threatened a general strike that was to begin on February 1,
but MacArthur issued a statement on January 31 saying that
it would cripple the movement of food and industry and could
not be allowed during “the present impoverished
and emaciated condition of Japan.”
The Communist newspaper and their literature were censored,
and the Japanese were not permitted to visit Communist countries.
In April the Labor Standards Law established the eight-hour day,
vacation time, sick leave, safety and sanitation protections,
accident compensation, and limits on hours and conditions
for working women and children.
In March 1948 some unions formed the Democratization League
that was anti-Communist.
In July the Diet passed a law to restrict the right
of government employees to strike.
In December an injunction was issued to stop a coal miners’ strike.
By 1949 more than 6,500,000 of the 15,000,000 industrial
workers were in more than 35,000 unions.
Also in 1949 a law protected the democratic control of unions
in order to prevent Communist takeovers.
The new constitution went into effect on May 3, 1947,
and on that day twenty million copies of
New Constitution, Bright Life were distributed.
The introduction suggested that declaring they would not
participate in war anymore was the only way
that Japan could be reborn.
In the elections that were held in April the Socialists
won the most seats with 143, and Katayama formed a coalition
with the Progressives, who had changed their name to the
Democratic party and were led by Ashida Hitoshi.
The problems of food shortages, unemployment, inflation,
and labor unrest persisted, and on February 10, 1948
Katayama and his split cabinet resigned.
One month later Ashida became prime minister,
but in October a scandal caused him to resign.
The Liberals had formed a coalition with the Democratic party
in March, and Yoshida became prime minister again in October.
He dissolved the Diet and held a
national election in January 1949.
The Liberal party increased their seats from 152 to 264,
a majority of the 466 members.
In June 1947 the Foreign minister Ashida told the press that
the Japanese wanted Okinawa back.
Three weeks later MacArthur argued that the Japanese
would not object because Okinawans are not Japanese and
because American bases were needed on Okinawa
to defend Japan’s security.
The Diet had abolished the voting rights of Okinawans
in December 1945, and in the burgeoning Cold War the
Emperor suggested that the American military occupation
could continue in the Ryukyu islands for 99 years.
In 1947 a law decentralized the police by requiring every
municipality with a population of more than 5,000
to maintain its own police force.
A small national police force controlled by the
National Public Safety Commission served rural areas.
In an emergency the prime minister could take over
operational control of local police,
but the Diet had to approve this within twenty days.
By June 1947 the deconcentration and anti-monopoly laws
forced 83 zaibatsu holding companies and about
5,000 other companies to reorganize.
The next month SCAP ordered the Mitsui Trading Company
and the Mitsubishi Trading Company dissolved.
Mitsui and Mitsubishi were broken up into 240 different firms.
Most executive salaries were limited to 36,000 yen a year,
and the very highest could not exceed 65,000.
A review board was established that reduced the number
of companies to be dissolved from
1,200 to 325 in February 1948.
The next month George Kennan, who was developing the
containment theory for the Cold War, visited and urged the
economic rehabilitation of Japan so that it could be a
constructive ally against the Communists.
In May business interests brought about a change in policy,
and only eleven companies were ordered
broken up in August 1949.
SCAP decided not to ship Japanese industrial equipment
to other nations as reparations so that
the Japanese economy could recover.
Instead Japan paid cash, and by 1964 Japan had paid
six Southeastern nations $477 million.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare tested for tuberculosis
and reduced the death rate from 280 per 100,000 in 1945
to 145 in 1950 and 108 in 1951.
Immunization reduced the morbidity rate of typhoid fever
about ninety percent.
In late 1949 and early 1950 the entire population of 83 million
was reimmunized for smallpox, and 1950 had only five cases
of those returning from Korea.
The death rate that reached a high of 29 per 1,000 in 1945
was reduced to less than 11 by 1950.
The Detroit banker Joseph Dodge came from West Germany
to Japan in December 1948, and he recommended
harsh policies to stabilize the economy.
The government workforce was reduced by 260,000
employees to balance the budget.
Government subsidies and price controls were reduced.
The Reconstruction Finance Bank was closed down,
and Dodge set the exchange rate at 360 yen to the dollar.
The unemployment and social distress that resulted enabled
the Communists to win 35 seats in the Diet in the election
on January 24, 1949, though the
Socialists lost 95 seats, retaining only 48.
The Occupation forces began rounding up
suspected war criminals in September 1945.
General Yamashita was put on trial for war crimes
in the Philippines on October 29.
American journalists reported that
hearsay evidence was allowed.
He had trained attack forces in Manchuria in 1941,
and while commanding Malaya he had allowed the secret
police to kill 5,000 Chinese merchants in Singapore.
Yet Yamashita had been criticized by Hirohito for disciplining
officers who allowed atrocities against British troops
in Malaya in 1942.
In 1944 he prevented US prisoners from being killed
according to imperial orders.
Yamashita was charged with many atrocities that
occurred in Manila that he could not control.
He was sentenced to death on December 7,
and the US Supreme Court upheld
his conviction by a vote of 5-2.
Justice Frank Murphy wrote a 32-page dissenting opinion
arguing that he had not participated in the
atrocities charged nor condoned them.
Murphy warned against a “procession of judicial lynchings
without due process of law.”
Yamashita was hanged on February 23, 1946 near Manila.
The trial of General Honma began
on December 7, 1945 in Manila.
He was the commander in the Philippines in 1942 and was
held responsible for the Bataan death march.
Once again Justice Murphy dissented because Honma
was not directly involved in the crimes.
He was executed by a firing squad on April 3, 1946.
On January 19, 1946 MacArthur promulgated the
Tokyo Charter of the International Military Tribunal
for the Far East (IMTFE) which followed rather closely the
principles that had been worked out in Nuremberg,
Germany defining crimes against peace, war crimes,
and crimes against humanity.
The Far Eastern Commission (FEC) demanded that all its
members sit on the Tribunal,
and the Charter was modified on April 23.
The Americans had tried to exclude the Philippines and India,
but they were members of the FEC and were included.
Neither Emperor Hirohito nor any members of his family
nor anyone who would implicate them was indicted.
The United States wanted to learn from Unit 731’s research
into bacteriological warfare and chemical weapons,
and they gave immunity to General Ishii Shiro and others
who had experimented on Allied soldiers.
Eventually 5,379 Japanese, 173 Formosans, and 148 Koreans
were brought to trial.
Many of their rights were violated as all statements were
admitted as evidence even though defense attorneys
were not present during interrogations.
Twenty-eight Class A war criminals were tried in Tokyo
by eleven judges from May 1946 to April 1948.
Of the 217 charges, 132 were proved.
Count One was the most sweeping and charged that there was
a conspiracy to dominate East Asia and all countries in the
Pacific and Indian Oceans militarily, politically, and economically.
The judgment was 1,781 pages, and the tribunal president
William Webb of Australia spent nine days
reading it in November 1948.
Eight of the judges were in full agreement.
B. V. A. Röling of the Netherlands in his concurring opinion
disagreed that aggression is an international crime,
and he voted to acquit Kido, Hata, Shigemitsu, and Togo.
Judge Henri Bernard of France dissented in the belief that
the Emperor, the principal author of the war,
had escaped prosecution,
and so he would not condemn the others.
Radhabindo Pal of India believed none of them were guilty
because conspiracy was not proven,
aggressive war was not an international crime,
and the war crimes had not been proven.
Pal had been a supporter of Chandra Bose and
Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,
and he argued that the American use of the atomic bomb
was as serious as any of the other crimes.
He warned that future generations
would condemn that “dire decision.”
The death sentences were appealed to the
United States Supreme Court, which ruled on
December 20, 1948 that it did not have jurisdiction.
The seven men hanged three days later were Tojo Hideki,
Doihara Kenji, Itagaki Seishiro, Kimura Heitaro, Muto Akira,
Matsui Iwane, and Hirota Koki.
Tojo was prime minister 1941-44.
General Doihara had Allied prisoners under his command
tortured and murdered.
General Itagaki withheld food and medicine
from thousands of Allied prisoners.
General Kimura was vice War minister under Tojo and allowed
his troops to commit atrocities in Burma.
General Muto was held responsible for atrocities in northern
Sumatra and for thousands of murders on the Bataan death march.
General Matsui was the officer in charge of the attack on Nanjing
that resulted in tens of thousands of murders and rapes.
Hirota was the only civilian hanged; as Foreign minister for
several years and prime minister he was convicted of
waging aggressive war in China and disregarding the laws of war.
The sixteen men sentenced to life in prison were War minister
Araki Sadao, Col. Hashimoto Kingoro who was a commander at
Nanjing and shelled an American gunboat, War Minister
Hata Shunroku who commanded a force in China 1940-44,
Prime Minister Hiranuma Kuchiro, Manzhouguo chief and Tojo
secretary Hoshino Naoki, Finance Minister Kaya Okinori,
Seal Keeper Kido Koichi whose diary provided much evidence,
Korea governor-general and Prime Minister Koiso Kuniaki,
Guandong Army commander Minami Jiro, Admiral Oka Takesumi,
Oshima Hiroshi who was ambassador to Germany,
War Minister Sato Kenryo, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro,
Shiratori Toshio who was ambassador to Italy,
economic planner Suzuki Teiichi, and Army Chief Umezu Yoshijiro.
Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori had signed the declaration of war
and was sentenced to twenty years, and Foreign Minister
Shigemitsu Mamoru received seven years.
Diplomat and Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke
and Admiral Nagano Osami died during the trial.
The erudite scholar Okawa Shumei tried to undress in court,
made bizarre statements, persuaded doctors that he was
suffering from tertiary syphilis, and was deemed unfit for trial.
In prison he wrote extensively on religion and later had
several lucid books published.
Prince Konoe had committed suicide
after he learned he was to be arrested.
Tojo shot himself in the chest but survived and was considered
the most impressive interlocutor during the trial.
He had previously said that his orders were given with the
Emperor’s authorization; but after Hirohito provided for his family,
Tojo retracted that.
By 1956 all the war criminals who had been convicted in Tokyo
had had their sentences commuted.
The Class B war criminals were high military officers who were
charged with violating the laws and customs of war and being
responsible for atrocities committed
by troops under their command.
The Class C war criminals were tried for crimes against
humanity that included mistreating prisoners as well as atrocities.
The Class B and C suspects were held to be tried by
Allied military commissions, usually
where the crimes were committed.
Eventually 2,944 were sentenced to prison
with 475 getting life terms.
The tribunals acquitted 1,018, and 279 were never tried.
Of the 984 death sentences the British upheld 223,
the Australians 153, the Nationalist Chinese 149,
the Americans 140, the French 26, and the Filipinos 17.
These trials were completed in the fall of 1949.
The Chinese Communists put Japanese war criminals in
re-education camps and did not sentence any to death.
More than a thousand suspects were tried in Yokohama,
and 200 were acquitted; 124 were sentenced to be hanged,
and 62 were given life imprisonment.
The Soviet Union may have executed
about 3,000 Japanese as war criminals.
In the last week of December 1949 in Khabarovsk twelve
members of the Guandong Army were convicted for
manufacturing and using biological weapons.
General Kiyoshi Kawashima testified that fleas contaminated
with plague were dropped from planes over Changde.
They were sentenced to a labor camp and
were repatriated to Japan in 1956.
Tojo himself violated the Field Service Code that had been
issued in 1941 when he ordered forced labor
by prisoners of war to help the war effort.
The worst treatment of prisoners of war occurred in
Borneo at Sandakan, where 2,000 Australians and 500 British
were being held in September 1943, but only six survived the war.
Prisoners who tried to escape were killed,
but most deaths were caused by disease and malnutrition.
Those able who refused to work were denied rations.
At Ambon only 123 out of 528 Australian POWs survived.
Of the 60,500 POWs who worked on the
Burma-Thailand railroad about 12,000 died.
In New Guinea, where more than a hundred thousand Japanese
soldiers were stranded without supplies, hunger led to extensive
cannibalism of prisoners and others.
Perhaps because those soldiers were also victims of the
Japanese war machine that abandoned them, only three soldiers
out of the fifteen prosecuted for cannibalism were convicted.
The Japanese forced about 90,000 “comfort women”
to serve their soldiers as prostitutes, about one for every 35 men.
The IMTFE condemned the influence of the Bushido code for
causing atrocities; but others have argued that this code had
been corrupted as self-discipline and compassion for others
were replaced by the zealous loyalty to the Emperor,
the state, and the military.
The militarist ethics led the Japanese Army to wage total war
with little constraint.
As a result Japan killed enormous
numbers of combatants and civilians.
Their army used thousands of pack animals
that had to be fed as they lived off the land,
leaving little food for the native population.
The drug traffic was used to obtain money.
Admiral Iwabuchi’s soldiers were accused of running amok
while drunk, plundering, raping, and
murdering the civilians in Manila in 1944-45.
The trials helped the Japanese people realize some of the
horrible consequences of their aggressive imperialism
and to understand why those efforts needed to be defeated.
The Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD) employed 6,000
people to identify and translate questionable material in seventy
newspapers, all books, magazines, and radio scripts
which were censored before publication.
In the four years before it was abolished in late 1949 the CCD
examined 330 million pieces of mail and monitored about
800,000 private phone conversations.
Their rules ordered publishers not to give censorship any publicity
so that the Japanese people would not even know
who and what were being censored.
Criticism of SCAP, occupation forces,
or any of the Allies was forbidden.
In 1946 the press was told that occupation costs were
to be called “war-termination costs.”
John Hersey’s Hiroshima, which was published in
The New Yorker magazine in 1946, could not be published in
Japanese translation until 1949, and the Americans required that
Nagai’s Bells of Nagasaki include an appendix on
“The Sack of Manila” by the Japanese in 1945.
Censorship in Japan changed in 1947 as Cold War issues
replaced concerns about militarism.
By December only two of the 28 periodicals still having
prepublication censorship were ultra-rightist while the other 26
were left-wing or progressive.
In October 1948 Suzuki Toshisada,
the publisher of
Japan Review, was threatened with penal service in
Okinawa if he did not fire his editor, who resigned.
Film censorship in Japan began as early as 1908, and in 1917
local governments used licensing laws to screen films and
eliminate objectionable material.
In 1925 Japan passed the Censorship Regulation of
Moving Pictures or “Films” that prohibited showing films to
those under fifteen years of age and required theaters to keep
men and women spectators separated.
Completed films with explanatory scripts had to be submitted
for approval, and explicit sexual scenes
and subversive ideas were suppressed.
The 1939 Film Law was based on a Nazi law and was
intended to promote “the nation’s cultural development.”
Scenes that challenged the royal family, the imperial constitution,
the empire, decorum, national morality, and proper use of the
Japanese language were forbidden.
In 1940 the Ministry of Internal Affairs even prohibited frivolous
films, and they urged films showing industrial
and food production and people ready to serve.
Under the American occupation on September 22, 1945
the Civil Information and Education (CIE) section began
encouraging films about the following subjects:
peaceful Japanese life; resettling soldiers as civilians;
restoring favor to former prisoners of war;
showing progress in industry, agriculture and national life;
encouraging labor unions;
developing political responsibility with free discussion,
respect for rights, and tolerance for all races and classes;
and dramatizing those who stood for
reedom and representative government.
The 1939 Film Law was repealed on October 16,
and by then the CIE was already demanding prior
censorship of film scripts and projects.
On November 16 they banned 236 of the 455 Japanese films
produced since 1931.
Three days later the CIE announced that
films would be forbidden if they were:
1. infused with militarism;
2. showing revenge as a legitimate motive;
3. nationalistic;
4. chauvinistic and anti-foreign;
5. distorting historical facts;
6. favoring racial or religious discrimination;
7. portraying feudal loyalty or contempt of life
as desirable and honorable;
8. approving suicide either directly or indirectly;
9. dealing with or approving the subjugation
or degradation of women;
10. depicting brutality, violence or evil as triumphant;
11. anti-democratic;
12. condoning the exploitation of children; or
13. at variance with the spirit or letter
of the Potsdam Declaration or any SCAP directive.9
Kamei Fumio’s Fighting Soldiers about the war in China
had been produced in 1939 with official sponsorship by the
military, but it was soon withdrawn for being defeatist.
Kamei’s 1946 documentary The Tragedy of Japan
was supported by American officials and used government
newsreels in Frank Capra’s exciting style to depict
how the ruling class led Japan into an
aggressive and destructive war.
When it began to attract larger audiences in August 1946,
GHQ abruptly banned the film.
In 1947 Kamei and Yamamoto Kajiro produced the feature
Between War and Peace in which a soldier returns from China
years after having been declared dead
and finds his wife has married his best friend,
as in D. W. Griffith’s 1911 Enoch Arden.
The film portrays the misery of the war in China,
the terrible living conditions in Tokyo with air raids,
and the post-war squalor.
The Civil Censorship Detachment required that 30 minutes
be cut from the film,
and no Americans were depicted
on screen during the occupation.
Kurosawa Akira (generally known as Akira Kurosawa)
was born on March 23, 1910 in Tokyo.
He wanted to be an artist; but to earn money he became an
assistant director, and the film director
Yamamoto Kajiro became his mentor.
Sanshiro Sugata in 1943 is the first feature
that Kurosawa directed.
Based on Tsueno Tomita’s novel and set in 1882,
Sanshiro Sugata learns from a master
that the art of judo is a spiritual discipline.
Kurosawa’s next feature The Most Beautiful made in 1944
is a docudrama about women working in a lens factory
for the war effort who come to realize that their leader
is beautiful for her spiritual qualities.
After exploiting the success of Sanshiro Sugata with a sequel,
in 1945 Kurosawa directed
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail,
which is based on the Noh drama Ataka and the famous
Kabuki play Kanjincho set in the 1180s.
General Yoshitsune and his retainers flee through the woods
disguised as monks, and to protect his master’s identity his
bodyguard Benkei beats him and later apologizes.
Battle scenes could not be portrayed
because they could not get horses.
Kurosawa changed the style of the play by creating a
comic porter played by Kenichi Enomoto.
This film was suppressed by the militarists as too liberal,
but CIE’s Motion Picture Unit banned it for exalting feudal values;
it was released in 1952 after the occupation ended.
In November 1945 SCAP ordered all four of Kurosawa’s
war-time films destroyed, but they survived.
In 1946 Kurosawa directed No Regrets for Our Youth
about students who are protesting Japanese militarism in the 1930s.
A professor’s daughter Yukie falls in love with Noge,
who is imprisoned for five years.
They get married, and Noge is arrested and killed
for trying to stop the war in 1941.
Yukie realizes he had no regrets, and she becomes a farmer.
The professor’s students believe that Noge made a great sacrifice.
Kurosawa’s 1947 film One Wonderful Sunday is a romance
about two young lovers who spend Sundays together and are
happy despite their poverty.
In Kurosawa's Drunken Angel (1948) Toshiro Mifune plays
a gangster with a bullet wound who goes to a doctor
and learns he has tuberculosis.
The doctor and a young woman try to rehabilitate the gangster,
who is killed by another gangster in a power struggle over territory.
Kurosawa said that he made this film to show how silly
the violence of gangsters is.
The Quiet Duel (1949) is about a doctor who gets syphilis
from a cut while operating on a patient.
He refuses to marry his girlfriend and discovers that the wife
of the man with syphilis has a deformed baby that dies.
The doctor tries to make the man take responsibility.
The quality of this film was reduced because of the severe
strikes affecting the film studios.
In Stray Dog (1949) a police detective has his gun stolen
and tracks down the thief who commits robberies and murder
during the difficult post-war poverty.
The theme is that bad surroundings can make men bad,
and some act like a mad dog.
Notes
1. Quoted in The Rising Sun by John Toland, p. 72.
2. Ibid., p. 836.
3. “The Potsdam Declaration” Department of State Bulletin, Vol. XII, p. 137-138
in The Record of American Diplomacy ed. Ruhl J. Bartlett, p. 672.
4. Quoted in The Making of Modern Japan by Marius B. Jansen, p. 669.
5. Quoted in American Caesar by William Manchester, p. 465.
6. Ibid., p. 491.
7. Quoted in Embracing Defeat by John W. Dover, p. 384.
8. Quoted in Modern Japan by Mikiso Hane, p. 377.
9. Quoted in Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo by Kyoko Hirano, p. 44-45.
This chapter has been published in the book EAST ASIA 1800-1949.
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