Embracing defeat Japan in the Wake of WW2 by John W Dower. 2000

Only on period immediately after the war.  13/6/24

1941 Dec The war started , with Pearl Harbour

1945 August 15 Hirohito broadcast over the radio the first time ever to tell the people that they had lost the war. People crowded around the common village radio to hear this.  

The war against America  had lasted 3 years 8 month followed by 6 years and 8 months occupation. Hirohito was kept  innocent  and this led to complication as all under him were accused of war crimes.

When Hirohito spoke on the radio it was the first  time the public heard his voice and he spoke a classical Japanese that the working man could not quite understand. It was only later on Sept 2rd that the capitulation was signed on the Missouri  which was Truman's state. The original 31 star US flag used by Mathew Perry was on display as well as the White house flag from when FDR had declared war in Dec 1941.

All the allies were present and the Japanese signed , Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu for the representatives of civilians and one who Chief of the Army General Staff, General Yoshijirō Umezu, represented the army. He had lost a leg in battle and appeared how Japan was at that moment  The Royal house did not sign. Then there were  a 450 aircraft  from the aircraft carriers that flew over and in the bay wee hundreds of US naval ships at a time when hardly any Japanese ships were left.

When the troops entered Japan they did not know how Japan kept fighting as the country was denuded of all resources. The military in charge meantime well selling all they could find in the stores on the black market.

The Japanese army estimated that they had lost 1.7 million troops,4.5 million servicemen returned home sick and seriously malnourished 300,000 eventually got disability pensions. Four fifths of Japans shipping and a third of her industrial capacity was destroyed. Japan had lost a third of her wealth and half of her potential income, living standards were 35% of their prewar level. 65% of all residences were destroyed and 30 % of the population were homeless. Most trains were still running with little rolling stock.

6.5 million Japanese were abroad when Japan capitulated of them 3.5million were soldiers. The Americans gave Liberty ships to repatriate them. Some were kept on by the British and American to help rebuild their colonies assuming that they would recover them. In Manchuria many were conscripted into the armies of the civil war mostly the communists. The Soviets kept many POWs till 1950, and put them in educational programs supporting the communist doctrine. 

There were 2.5 Korean in Japan, forced  there as workers for the war effort. 640,000 remained in Japan the rest were repatriated to Southern Korea. Returning soldiers did not always get a hero's welcome and many could not find their homes and families in the ruins at home. In Manchuria many families straggles to find a way home and lost each other and children and their were many orphans looking to get home. Some families left children with Chinese as they could not carry them.

With capitulation looting started on a grand scale of army supplies. Soldiers lynched hated officer. 

Some soldiers arrived home after a few years to discover that they were registered as dead and their wives had remarried. Destitute wives who stopped receiving husband pensions, orphans homeless children fending for themselves in streets.

Japan now underwent a Revolution from Above .The first general election took place in April 1946 with universal suffrage and it produced a reactionary cabinet under conservative Yoshida Shigeru. He resigned a day after MacArthur brought about his civil- liberties directive. Even the communist party supported MacArthur's reforms of this bloodless revolution. America had cut the chains of ordinary Japanese and granted them civil liberties,  and took the crushing burden of the old zaibatsu oligopolies off the workers backs. The Americans wanted to root out the feudalistic family system that rendered women legally inferior.  Somebody pointed our that Japan had undergone a revolution without help of our own hands. The educational system was also changed.

The occupation of Japan was not really by the allies but the US entirely with MacArthur's monopoly of power.  The War Crimes tribunal may have had  Allied input with the president of the tribunal an Australian, but this was an American show.
If Japan had capitulated earlier they were offered a conditional capitulation but after the Potsdam Agreement August 1945 only a unconditional surrender was available. In Germany which was part of Europe, Nazism was considered an evil that had to be eradicated but the military culture of Japan had to be dealt with by completely changing the whole society.. It was not diseased branches of a tree but the whole tree needed replacing .

The military establishment was completely abolished. All political prisoner were freed. The elites in the Diet were shocked at the changes.

Japan had been at war since 1931 when they attacked China. For a long time the population were getting insufficient food and people had been advised on the radio to add sawdust to dumpling they eat, to eat, the public were advised to eat  empty silkworm cocoons, and eat all sorts of creatures  When the war ended the situation became worse as they were no longer getting any supplies from China where there had been Japanese colonies.

During the war years crime had almost vanished but with the post war situation and the returning defeated army it became rampant. Prostitution became a big problem and children solicited soldiers telling them come with me to my sister. There was even a gang of women robbers.

Alcoholism became a big problem with illicit brews causing blindness and death. With hunger came diseases which included everything from polio to rampant tuberculosis.

Inflation became rampant and the bringing about of the new Yen was supposed to help stop this. However the treasury had new expenses they had to pay to repatriate the overseas citizens and armies and discovered they had to pay for the army  of occupation, People who had saved during the war ran to withdraw deposits previously blocked and they needed the money to buy food on the black market. When the Emperor announced capitulation the remaining monies in the treasury was distributed to high up officials and was totally corrupt.

Even with children playing you now saw a change instead of acting kamakazi pilots or soldiers fighting for the Emperor, they made paper hats like GIs and when cheap models of US jeeps were marketed they sold in thousands.

Programs were set up by a women's magazine to match men to women, but there was such a shortage of men that many women had to get used to the idea of being single.

All sorts of industrial goods found their way onto the black market and the lower Diet house, reluctantly gave permission to investigate this, as many official were involved.  It was looted materials from the war end, some was stockpiles from the home defense that was ready to keep fighting when the war ended. It took till about 1950 till the black market prices dropped to closer to the normal price. Then as Japan was cut off from her former colonies she had not foreign trade and Japanese were not  allowed to travel abroad till the occupation ended. She also had no normal trade and diplomatic relations.