Japan as the Occupier and the Occupied

Kenneth A. Loparo, M. Caprio, Kenneth A. Loparo, M. Caprio, Christine de Matos

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349681150, 9781137408105
• eBook ISBN: 9781137408112
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

Japan as the Occupier and the Occupied examines transwar political, military and social transitions in Japan and various territories that it controlled, including Korea, Borneo, Singapore, Manchuria and China, before and after August 1945. This approach allows a more nuanced understanding of Japan's role as occupier and occupied to emerge.

1

Before and after Defeat: Crossing the Great 1945 Divide

Mark E. Caprio and Christine de Matos

Like other Japanese across the empire on August 15, 1945, Saitō Tomoya anticipated that this day would be anything but ordinary, perhaps even a turning point in the war and Japan’s imperial history. The media had alerted the empire of the unprecedented announcement to be made that day at noon by the emperor. All subjects were to gather around a radio at that time, which the vast majority did. Although rather allusive in mentioning the ‘end’ of the war or Japan’s ‘defeat’, the prerecorded message succeeded in achieving its primary purpose: to inform subjects of Japan’s decision to accept the Allied terms of surrender as dictated by the Potsdam Declaration. Saitō recalls the imperial message that they must ‘pave the way for a grand peace ... by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable’¹ as sufficient in convincing listeners of the decisive turn of events.²

The emperor’s message, though shocking and in many ways critical in eventually altering Japan’s image as a country of war to one of peace, had a gradual rather than immediate effect. Saitō and other now former Japanese occupiers residing in the northern Korean city of P’yŏngyang would not seriously feel its impact until Soviet troops arrived on August 23. Only then would they learn that their anticipated repatriation would be delayed, and their tenure as overseas Japanese nationals extended indefinitely. Saitō would finally return to Japan in July 1948; others, like his father, would not do so for almost another decade, following a detour to Siberia. Many were fated never to return, with some Japanese succumbing to American fire bombings during the Korean War. Delayed repatriation joined other elements of colonial occupation that stubbornly lingered into post-liberation histories, often assisted by the Allied occupations that replaced Japanese colonial rule.

Japanese across the empire faced uncertainties similar to those felt by the Saitō family as their country passed from colonial and wartime occupier to defeated and occupied. Those on the home islands had a less uncertain immediate future regarding their residence: whether or not their home had survived the relentless Allied bombings, they would rebuild their lives among the ruins left by war. Still, uncertainty prevailed: would the Allied occupiers carry wartime grudges and seek retribution? What physical punishment might they inflict on their enemies upon arrival? How would they govern a people with whom they had exchanged gunfire just days previously, and upon whose cities they had recently unleashed aerial bombings the likes of which had never been witnessed in the history of warfare? For Japanese residing overseas in now former imperial territories, the possibility of hostile retribution by those they formerly administered accompanied uncertainties about the arriving Allied occupation armies. The majority understood that defeat in war meant the loss of Japan’s empire and inevitable repatriation to the homeland. However, doubts remained over just when and how they would be able to return to Japan, and perhaps the nature of their reception by their fellow Japanese upon repatriation. These concerns carried much heavier weight for the military than civilians due to the possibility of indictment for war crimes.³ Answers to these questions hinged primarily on their new occupiers’ administrative policies. Additionally, the proximity and accessibility of their location to the home islands influenced the postwar future of these overseas Japanese.

For Saitō, his family’s residence in the relatively distant Soviet-occupied northern Korean city of P’yŏngyang, combined with his father’s technical expertise and military service, delayed their return to Japan by three years. Saitō remembers family life in post-liberation Korea under Soviet occupation as fortuitous in that, along with other families headed by technicians, his received relatively favorable treatment by Koreans who appreciated the assistance they lent to post-liberation development. At the same time, their lives were challenged by Soviet harassment and the incarceration and deportation of other Japanese military veterans. Tens of thousands of such Japanese were assembled and transported to Siberia as forced labor. Additionally, thousands more Japanese colonial subjects, who had been spread across the empire through conscription or labor mobilization, were also forced to remain abroad.

The young Saitō’s life in northern Korea was filled with new experiences as the Japanese sought to continue their lives under Soviet occupation, even as their population dwindled. Only 14-years old when the war ended, Saitō was called upon to teach at the local Japanese school when it reopened in 1947. He also gained a perspective of the Korean people that his former status as occupier had denied him. Upon meeting the ‘rather attractive’ Ms Kim, who approached him in search of an opportunity to practice her Japanese, Saitō reflected: ‘Why was I so blind to such beauty in Korean female youth during the war? ... Was it only me who harbored these misguided thoughts? Surely among the Korean people are more outstanding people like this girl!’⁴

Such a reflection is but one of many that emerged from both the vanquished Japanese and the liberated colonial subjects in the wake of the emperor’s surrender speech. The speech had sent many among the liberated out into city and town streets across the empire in celebration, while others with a less than ‘patriotic’ record from the years of Japanese occupation assumed a lower profile. The vanquished Japanese struggled with what Ian Nish calls the ‘imperial hangover’⁵ in trying to determine what defeat meant and how it would challenge their future. A significant number of Japanese refused to return to Japan, assuming new identities among the very people who had previously been forced to relocate to serve Japan’s imperial ambitions. Perhaps surprisingly, encounters between liberated peoples and their former occupiers were occasionally cordial and even sympathetic; yet they were also strained or violent as voids in the social order encouraged acts of retribution or scapegoating in both Japan and abroad.⁶ The arrival of replacement Allied occupiers, which included both newly appointed and returning European colonial powers, injected further confusion into this mix. Long-subjugated people often demonstrated frustration over the barriers erected to prevent claims to rights of self-determination and sovereignty, which the Allied powers had long pledged to honor once peace had been restored.⁷ As in Europe, peoples in many parts of Asia initiated their post-liberation period with further violence against both their recent repressive Japanese occupiers and the new ones who installed their own occupation administration in order to ‘liberate’.

The Japanese emperor’s broadcast had signaled Japan’s intention to end its official involvement in the fighting that had spread across much of Asia and the Pacific from the early 1930s. His pronouncement did not, however, bring an immediate end to Japanese influence in the colonies; dregs stubbornly lingered on well after liberation and continued to influence their future. Nor did it bring immediate peace to the region as civil wars and wars of decolonization continued decades into the ‘postwar’ period. The announcement also triggered political struggles among rival factions jockeying for political space in the emerging nation-states.⁸ The decolonization process continued into, and in some cases outlived, the cold war as previous members of the Japanese empire pressured their former subjugator to redress colonial-era injustices. New societies also struggled to address domestic legacies from this period of Japanese occupation, including collaboration. The rectification of colonial-era problems were often delayed as the second occupation that replaced Japan’s often placed priority on an orderly transition of power in an emerging and uncertain bipolar world. As seen in Saitō’s case, this transition often trapped peoples, temporarily or permanently, in the location of their displacement. Across Japan’s vast former empire, as well as in the imperial homeland, the scars of war and occupation stretched across the 1945 war-peace divide that often serves as either the endpoint of Japan’s period of war or the commencement of its postwar peace.

This volume aims to capture various elements that bridge this 1945 divide, particularly those that accompanied Japan’s fall from its suzerain perch as occupier of Asian and Pacific territories to the depths of occupation under its Allied conquerors.⁹ While recognizing differences in administrative purpose (but not necessarily practical influence) in Japanese colonial and Allied postwar occupations, the contributors to this volume consider the influences these had on the peoples of Japan’s empire, including the Japanese, with particular attention to the period between 1931 and 1952. In contrast to studies primarily focused on either side of this divide, this volume joins other academic efforts that examine the effects of this transition on Japan and the territories and peoples incorporated into its empire.¹⁰ The imperial rescript that called for the Japanese military to lay down its arms and endure the unendurable thus served as a hinge to connect rather than delineate the two chapters in these histories. Continuities across this 1945 divide reflect the limitations of historical time frames that artificially construct and separate eras and events. These continuities also reveal overlaps in areas of personnel, institutions, and ideas that demonstrate the persistent residues of colonialism that lingered well into post-liberation histories and even into contemporary times.

The chapters that follow examine these issues from three overlapping dimensions: spatial, corporeal, and psychological. How did the agents of occupation attempt to control not only geographic territory, but also human bodies and minds? What procedures did occupiers employ to exert their power and authority, and how did the occupied respond to their efforts and institutions? Did the occupiers experience failures of influence? To what extent did post-liberation occupations differ from the Japanese occupations they replaced? Can generalizations be made about military occupations and their impact across temporal and spatial boundaries? In addition to Japan’s experiences as both an occupier of territory and occupied under the administration of others, chapters in this volume consider transitions of occupation power in places where English-language historiography has been comparatively less active, including Korea, Borneo, China, Singapore, Soviet Russia (Sakhalin), and the Ryūkyū Islands (Okinawa).¹¹ The contributors also explore a wide variety of issues related to occupation, including human migration, film, eugenics, collaboration, national and ethnic identity, labor, legislation, administration, and historical memory.

The territorial dimension: spatial occupation

The most obvious and visible component of an occupation is the control of territorial spaces identified as strategically important to the occupier. Examining Japan’s history as occupier and occupied highlights two important points regarding territorial occupations around the globe. First, while the majority of the world’s nations have at some point either been occupied by a foreign power or been itself a power that occupied, fewer territories have assumed both roles within a short space of time.¹² Second, while occupations may adopt multiple forms, often distinguished by the anticipated duration of the occupier’s articulated goals, they tend to share the long-term ambition of integrating the occupied territory into a broader regional or global framework. Two key comparative examples of territorial occupation include the long-term colonial and the shorter-term trusteeship models. While the former aim to integrate a territory into the temporally unlimited empire, the latter presume a shorter time frame for actual territorial control with a view toward eventual political sovereignty, though not necessarily full economic, military, ideological, and/or cultural independence.¹³

Japan’s early history as an occupier follows the colonial model. Meiji-era (1868–1910) Japanese governments declared the territories they colonized on the periphery – including Ezo (Hokkaido), the Ryūkyūs (Okinawa), Taiwan (Formosa), and Korea – as integral parts of a homeland that were later joined by Manchuria and China to eventually form a pan-Asian sphere of ‘co-existence’ and ‘co-prosperity’. However, states on the periphery more closely resembled the trusteeship system, born of the exigencies of war. These peripheral occupied areas included the Philippines and territories in present-day Southeast Asia, which were all to gain self-sovereignty once they had demonstrated their loyalty to Japan and its regiona...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Before and after Defeat: Crossing the Great 1945 Divide
• Part I  The Physical Dimension: Corporeal Occupation
• Part II  The Cognitive Dimension: Psychological Occupation
• Bibliography
• Index