Japon de 1945 a 1952

The Allied Occupation of Japan

By Sergio Adler

April 25th, 2008

East Asian Civilization

Dr. Siu

The Allied Occupation of Japan. Sergio Adler.

On August 30th 1945, General Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of the Allied Powers descended from his aircraft and stepped on to Japanese soil. Japan was a defeated nation, and theGeneral’s arrival marked the start of six and a half years of military occupation.[1]
Japan surrendered on August 15th 1945, 6 days after the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and 9 days after the bomb in Hiroshima. The bombs killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki. The Emperor of Japan, Hirohito, after seeing this, accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration andsurrendered, thus marking the end of the pacific war and therefore World War II.
That meant that Japan had lost all its possessions including Korea and Taiwan and even the control of their own soil. The allied forces divided Japan’s soil but they declared General MacArthur as the supreme commander.
After a long discussion between the allied forces, especially US and the Soviet Union, they decidedthat North Korea, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands would be under the Soviet Union. South Korea, Okinawa, the Amami Islands, the Ogasawara Islands, and the Japanese possessions in Micronesia would be in control of the United States. Finally Republic of China would be in control of Taiwan and Pescadores.
MacArthur was appointed Supreme commander by President Truman and ordered him to directthe postwar occupation of the defeated army. The General was given this title because of his sixteen years of experience in Asia and his role in the American occupation of the German Rhineland after World War I.
General Douglas MacArthur’s task in Japan was a very important and life changing task, he was to democratize a nation of 74 million people ruled by militarist. As supreme commander thegeneral outranked the Japanese prime minister and even the Emperor.
President Truman said to the supreme commander: “from the moment of the surrender, the authority of the Emperor and Japanese Government to rule the state will be subject to you and you will take such steps as you deem proper to effectuate the surrender terms”. [2] By the end of 1945 more than 350,000 US personnel were stationedthroughout Japan
MacArthur’s goals of the occupation policy in Japan were to insure that Japan would not again become a menace to the US and to arrange an establishment of a Japanese government capable of maintaining peace enforcing responsibilities. With these goals MacArthur said that he would destroy the military power, punish war criminals, build a structure of representative government,modernize the constitution, hold free elections, enfranchise the women, encourage free economy, liberate the farmers, release the political prisoners, abolish police oppression, develop a free responsible press, liberalize education, decentralize political power and finally separate church and state.[3]
The organization of the allied occupation in Japan was a very simple one from my point ofview but it consisted all around the United States, in the commission there was people from all of the Allied countries and at the head was the United States, they all decided on very important decisions and told the US joint chiefs of staff after that the joint chiefs told the supreme commander of the allied forces (MacArthur) and he ordered to the allied council of Japan, which consisted inpeople form all the allied countries as well, under the general there was his own chief of staff which commanded the different staff sections like economic, governmental, science, natural resources, communications, intelligence, etc. Under them there was the central Japanese government and the Japanese people which were under surveillance by the occupation forces.
The decolonization and...