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Comment: Reflections on the Occupation of Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Ray A. Moore
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Abstract

This comment on Leon Hollerman's stimulating article on international economic controls adopted during the Occupation of Japan focuses on his thesis that a contradiction existed between SCAP's professed policy and its actions. After a brief discussion of some problems of Occupation research and the need to integrate the period more fully into Japanese and American history, the comment attempts not to challenge Hollerman's thesis but to explore it in other spheres of SCAP's activities. It is argued that the inconsistency noted by Hollerman ran through many Occupation reform policies, and that its origins are to be found in the sharp divergence of views among American policy makers in the summer of 1945 concerning pre-war Japan and Japanese militarism, and different assumptions about the extent of change necessary to achieve American objectives in the postwar period.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , August 1979 , pp. 721 - 734
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1979

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References

1 Dallek, Robert, “The Truman Era,” May, Ernest R. and Thomson, James C. Jr., eds., American–East Asian Relations: A Survey (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972), p. 373Google Scholar.

2 One indication of research on the Occupation period is the volume being edited by Robert E. Ward with contributions by fifteen American and Japanese scholars. Symposia on the Occupation have been held since 1975 by the MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Virginia. See Redman, L. H., ed., The Occupation of Japan and its Legacy to the Postwar World (Norfolk: The MacArthur Memorial, 1976)Google Scholar; and The Occupation of Japan: Impact of Legal Reform (Norfolk: The MacArthur Memorial, 1978)Google Scholar. A third volume of proceedings, “The Occupation of Japan: Economic Policy and Reform,” is being prepared for publication. Other studies in progress are: Marlene J. Mayo on economic reforms; Dale M. Hellegers on constitutional reform; Daniel Danelski on the supreme court; Peter Frost on education; John C. Perry on American views of the Occupation; and Howard B. Schonberger on T. A. Bisson. John W. Dower's long-awaited study, Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience, 1878–1954 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1979)Google Scholar, contains a section on the Occupation. Dower is also working on a comprehensive history of the period.

3 All of these images are present in William Manchester's treatment of the Occupation in American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978)Google Scholar.

4 Pyle, Kenneth B., The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of Cultural Identity, 1881–1885 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

5 “Occupied Japan as History and Occupation History as Politics,” JAS, 34:2 (1975), 485–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Takemae Eiji, Amakawa Akira, Hata Ikuhiko, and Sodei Rinjirō.

7 For a brief description of some of the Foreign Ministry Documents, see my “New Japanese Government Materials on the American Occupation of Japan,” in Redman, ed., The Occupation of Japan: Impact of Legal Reforms, pp. 201–7.

8 Theodore H. Cohen, “Labor Democratization in Japan: The First Years” (paper presented at the 1978 MacArthur Memorial symposium).

9 Status of the Japanese Emperor, 4 March 1943, Diplomatic Records Section, State Department Decimal File 894.001/3–443, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

10 Barnett, Richard J., Roots of War (Baltimore: Penguin, 1973), p. 139Google Scholar.

11 This point is developed in my “Democracy and Christianity in the American Occupation of Japan” (paper presented at the American Historical Association convention in Dallas, 1977)Google Scholar.

12 For example, see CAC-342 Preliminary, 5 January 1945, Notter File, Box 116, Diplomatic Section, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

13 Iriye, Akira, “Culture and Power: Intercultural Dimensions of International Relations” (paper presented at the American Historical Association convention in San Francisco, 1978), p. 16Google Scholar.

14 Ward, Robert E., ed., Political Development in Modern Japan (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1968), p. 501Google Scholar. Also, Ikuhiko, Hata, “Japan Under the Occupation,” The Japan Interpreter, 10:3–4 (1976), 362Google Scholar.

15 Schonberger, Howard, “The Japan Lobby in American Diplomacy, 1947–1952,” Pacific Historical Review, 46:3 (1977), 329 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Esterly, Henry H., “Japan's Reentry into Pelagic Fisheries: A Political Problem of rhe Occupation” (paper presented at the MacArthur Memorial symposium, 13–15 April 1978)Google Scholar.

17 Susan Pharr, “A Radical U.S. Experiment: Women's Rights Laws and the Occupation of Japan,” Redman, pp. 131–132.

18 Memo from Marshall Green to Max Bishop, 15 February 1949, Diplomatic Records Section, State Department Decimal File 894.00, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

19 Rinjirō, Sodei, Mākāsa no nisen nichi (Tokyo: Chūkō Bunko, 1976), 215–40Google Scholar; and Moore, Ray A., “Soldier of God: MacArthur in Japan”(paper presented at the New England Seminar on Japan, April 1977)Google Scholar.

20 Bunce's, William K. memo for record, 14 May 1946Google Scholar, Box 5922, SCAP Records, CI & E; Bunce to Nugent, 6 October 1947, Box 5924, SCAP Records, CI & E; and Bunce's memo, 4 September 1946, SCAP Records, CI & E, National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland.

21 See Moore, “Democracy and Christianity,” for fuller treatment.

22 U.S. Department of State, Conference of Berlin (Potsdam), 1945 (Washington, D.C: GPO, 1960), II, 1269Google Scholar.

23 Mayo, Marlene J., “Planning Japan's Economic Future: Deconcentration and the Business Purge in the Initial American Policy for Occupied Japan, 1942–46” (paper presented at the Columbia University Seminar on Modern Japan, 8 December 1978), p. 29Google Scholar.

24 Personal interview with Robert Fearey, 22 February 1979.

25 Conference of Berlin (Potsdam), 1945, I, 896; II, 1272, n. 3Google Scholar.

26 SWNCC 55 and Minutes of the Subcommittee on the Far East (SFE) of 3 October 1945, Microfilm T 1198, National Archives, Washington, D.C; and Robert Fearey's memo to George Atcheson, 13 October 1945, Record Group 84, Box 2275, Vol. VI, National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland.

27 Iriye, “Culture and Power,” p. 17.

28 MacArthur's telegram to Marshall, 3 September 1945, Radio Message File, CM-IN-2193, War Department, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

29 U.S. Department of State, foreign Relations of the United States, 1946 (Washington, D.C: GPO, 1971), VIII, 395–96Google Scholar.

30 Bunce to Nugent, 6 October 1947.

31 Kennan, George F., Memoirs, 1925–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), p. 391Google Scholar; see also Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948 (Washington, D.C: GPO), VI, 694–700Google Scholar.

32 Schonberger, p. 336.