Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

In the wake of defeat, approximately 6.5 million Japanese were stranded in Asia, Siberia, and the Pacific Ocean area. Roughly 3.5 million of them were soldiers and sailors. The remainder were civilians, including many women and children—a huge and generally forgotten cadre of middle-and lower-class individuals who had been sent out to help develop the imperium. Some 2.6 million Japanese were in China at war’s end, 1.1 million dispersed through Manchuria. In addition, almost six hundred thousand troops laid down their arms in the Kurile Islands and the Darien’Port Arthur enclave in southern Manchuria. Over five hundred thousand Japanese were in Formosa (Taiwan) and nine hundred thousand in Korea, the countries Japan had colonized in 1895 and 1910, respectively. The number in Southeast Asia and the Philippines was close to nine hundred thousand at war’s end, mostly military personnel. Hundreds of thousands of other remnants of the emperor’s shredded army were stranded on scattered islands in the Pacific.20

The sexual implications of having to accommodate hundreds of thousands of Allied servicemen had been terrifying, especially to those who were aware of the rapacity their own forces had exhibited elsewhere as well as of the huge numbers of non-Japanese women who had been forced to serve the imperial troops as ianfu or “comfort women.” In the wake of the emperor’s surrender broadcast, rumors spread like wildfire that “the enemy, once landed, will violate women one after the other.” The Home Ministry’s intelligence analysts immediately recognized the link between these rumors and the behavior of their own forces abroad. As one internal police report put it, “many of those who speak of pillage and rape, unsettling people’s minds, are returnees from the war front.”6 Urban families were urged to send their womenfolk to the countryside. Women were advised to continue to wear the baggy monpe pantaloons of the war years rather than more enticing feminine attire. Young girls were cautioned not to appear friendly. Still, it was taken for granted that the foreigners would demand sexual gratification. The question was simply: who would provide it? The government lost no time in answering this question. On August 18, the Home Ministry sent a secret wireless message to regional police officials throughout the country instructing them to prepare special and exclusive “comfort facilities” for the occupation army. Such preparations were to be made with maximum discretion. Responsibility for...

To the government’s surprise, professional prostitutes proved reluctant to become latter-day Okichis. By one account, they were fearful that the Americans, commonly portrayed as demonic figures in wartime propaganda, possessed oversized sexual organs that could injure them. The organizers of the special comfort facilities thus undertook to recruit ordinary women by posting a large signboard addressed “To New Japanese Women” in the Ginza district of downtown Tokyo. “As part of urgent national facilities to deal with the postwar,” this read, somewhat vaguely, “we are seeking the active cooperation of new Japanese women to participate in the great task of comforting the occupation force.”

Essentially, he regarded the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the act of a Christian God meant to bring the world to its senses. That the second atomic bomb fell on a city with a long tradition of Christianity only reinforced his sense of divine intervention. In a typically apocalyptic passage, he asked: “Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole-burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all nations during World War II?”

In 1950, Japanese readers got their first unvarnished view of the Pacific War from the perspective of the American fighting man when the translation of Norman Mailer’s novel The Naked and the Dead appeared and quickly became a bestseller. As an enduring impression, however, Mailer’s gritty novel paled before a selection of letters and other writings by university students killed in the war. Edited by progressive intellectuals and evocatively titled Kike—Wadatsumi no Koe (Listen! The Voices of the Ocean), this extraordinary exercise in transforming war words into peace words was inspired by the belief that these intimate communications from the very maw of the war itself would be read as an eloquent cry for peace.

This famous photo taken at the first meeting of General MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito on September 27, 1945, created a sensation when published in the Japanese press. In a single stroke, it established both MacArthur’s authority and the fact that he would stand by the emperor.

The emperor’s awkwardness was apparent from the first moments of his very first tour. On February 19, 1946 he visited a factory and black market in Yokohama. The black market, he said, was “interesting.” The next day he appeared at a camp for repatriated people, where he asked an official two questions. The first was, “What sort of feelings do these military and civilian repatriates have when they return to Japan?” The second concerned what was being done so that former Formosan and Korean colonial subjects could return home “with true gratification.” These “conversations,” recorded by NHK public radio, were broadcast on February 22 and included the emperor’s characteristic response, then and afterwards, to any answer he was given: Ah, so? (Oh, is that so?).

His response to Hiroshima, almost two years after the tours began, was, “There seems to have been considerable damage here.”

War, as a sovereign right of the nation, and the threat or use of force, is forever renounced as a means of settling disputes with other nations. The maintenance of land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be authorized. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

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 a 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.

President Truman also found a receptive audience in Japan when he declared that the invention of the atomic bomb reflected what could be accomplished by a free society. Science could flourish only under a “spirit of freedom.”21 Japanese scientists, many of them trained in Europe and the United States, applauded this new commitment. One of the first contingents of American scientists to arrive in Japan encountered a wonderful expression of these sentiments in the form of this makeshift notice, handwritten in English on brown wrapping paper and affixed to the front door of a major oceanographic institute outside of Tokyo: This is a marine biological station with her history of over sixty years. If you are from the Eastern Coast, some of you might know Woods Hole or Mt. Desert or Tortugas. If you are from the West Coast, you may know Pacific Grove or Puget Sound Biological Station. This place is a place like one of these. Take care of this place and protect the possibility for the continuation of our peaceful research. You can destroy the weapons and the war instruments But save the civil equipments for Japanese students When you are through with your job here Notify to the University and let us come back to our scientific home

Buddhism as Repentance and Repentance as Nationalism The concept of “repentance” was placed at the center of public debate on August 28, the day the first advance contingent of Americans arrived at the Atsugi air base. Asked by Japanese journalists about the “cause of defeat,” Prime Minister Higashikuni carefully explained that many factors had contributed, including restrictive laws, errors by military and governmental authorities, and a decline in popular morals as evidenced, for example, in black market activities. Then, borrowing a phrase from the statement by the head of the Information Bureau the previous day, he declared that “the military, civilian officials, and the people as a whole must thoroughly self-reflect and repent. I believe that the collective repentance of the hundred million (ichioku sōzange) is the first step in the resurrection of our country, the first step in bringing unity to our country.”

“This war was begun while we farmers knew nothing about it,” one irate rural man exclaimed, “and ended in defeat while we believed we were winning. There is no need to do repentance for something we weren’t in on. Repentance is necessary for those who betrayed and deceived the people.” Another member of the hundred million was even terser. “If collective repentance of the hundred million means those in charge of the war are now trying to distribute responsibility among the people,” he wrote to a newspaper, “then it’s sneaky.”