Anglo-Japanese Treaty

Anglo-Japanese Treaty

The Anglo-Japanese treaty was signed between Lord Lansdowne (1845–1927), the British foreign secretary, and Hayashi Tadasu (1850–1913), the minister of Japan, on January 30, 1902, in London to create an alliance scheduled to last five years. Its terms gave Japan an equal partnership with a great power of the Western world.

The purpose of this first military agreement was stabilization and peace in northeast Asia. On Japan's side it was to prevent Russian expansionism in northeast Asia, and on Great Britain's side it protected British interests and its commerce in China.

Japan felt vulnerable due to Russian influence in Manchuria and interest in Korea. The Anglo-Japanese treaty allowed Japan to become a more powerful player in world diplomacy and in negotiations with Russia.

It allowed Japan to go to war against Russia in February 1904 and to ask for financial support from Great Britain. The Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) astounded the world because of the success of Japan. It ended the menace of Russia and helped Great Britain to play a greater role in Europe.

The revision of the Anglo-Japanese treaty was signed on August 12, 1905, between Lansdowne and Hayashi in Lansdowne's residence. The new terms included an extension of the area covered by the alliance to include India, British recognition of Japan's right to control Korea, and Japan's recognition of Great Britain's right to safeguard her possessions in India.

It also provided that in the event of any unprovoked attack neither party would come to the assistance of its ally. The alliance would remain in force for the following 10 years. The new terms showed Japan had increased its status in international society after winning the war over Russia.

The third Anglo-Japanese alliance agreement was negotiated in 1911 after Japan's annexation of Korea. Important changes concerned the deletion of the articles related to Korea and India and the extension of the alliance for 10 more years. The second revision accommodated Japan's annexation of Korea but also, at Britain's request, excluded the United States from the region. The alliance enabled Japan to participate in World War I as a British ally.

With World War I beginning in the summer of 1914 and with political changes in China, Anglo-Japanese relations entered a new era. The new situation in the Far East restulted in a closer relationship between the United States and China.

With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution and Civil War in 1917, U.S. participation in the war, and later the publication of President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points on how to end the war, the groundwork was set for new national relations.

These new circumstances brought changes in Anglo-Japanese relations after World War I. Great Britain no longer feared the Russian expansion in China and had developed a close relationship with the United States. The United States had also started to view Japan as a competitor in East Asia. The problems of China were also affecting international politics.

As a result, the United States decided to call a conference whose aim was to prevent expansion in China. At the Washington Conference (1921–22) Anglo-American cooperation in Asia allowed the United States to force Japan to accede to an end of the Anglo-Japanese alliance. The official termination of the alliance took place on August 17, 1923.

Black Dragon and Japanese Ultranationalist Societies

Black Dragon and Japanese Ultranationalist Societies

Owing their origins to the yakuza, Japan's native organized crime group, Japanese ultranationalist societies gained strength in the ex-samurai class during the reign of Emperor Meiji. The purpose of one such society, organized in 1901, was the expansion of Japanese control past the Amur River, the border between northeastern China (Manchuria) and Russia.

The river, named Amur in Russian, has a Chinese name that translates as the Black Dragon River, hence the name for the society. The Black Dragon Society and other new types of yakuza organizations considered themselves righteous gangsters who worked for the rights of the people, reverence for the imperial institution, and total Japanese domination of Asia.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the reign of Emperor Meiji had turned Japan into a world power with a growing economy and a population of around 45 million people. Commerce flourished in Japan.


As the economy grew and the priorities of the population shifted toward consumerism, gangs grew in power as they organized laborers in businesses such as construction, gambling, building the new metal-wheeled rickshaw, and running street stalls. Gang bosses often opened legitimate businesses to act as covers for underground work. Often they paid off local police to keep their activities quiet.

As their power grew, the yakuza increased their presence in politics. Eventually, close ties to influential officials developed, and many gangs worked under government sanction that protected them from persecution. Since both sides were motivated by opportunism, ideology played only a small part at this time, and cooperation between the gangs and the government resulted.

There was always a conservative slant to the yakuza, but as the Japanese increased their international military presence and some Japanese sought greater democracy, the new yakuza became more conservative and ultranationalist.

First erupting on the southernmost Japanese island of Kyushu, ultranationalism became the defining force behind Japan's move to extreme conservativism. The island served as the home to a large number of discontented ex-samurai.

Many of these samurai had already been taken advantage of by charismatic patriots and politicians who fought against the perceived disregard for tradition among the modern sector. The city of Fukuoka, located closest to mainland Asia, had developed into a center of xenophobic ultranationalism.

From this center of antigovernment ideology, Mitsuru Toyama emerged as a strong leader who effected lasting change in Japanese organized crime. During his 20s, Toyama's political activities sent him to jail for three years, and upon his release he joined his first nationalist society, called the Kyoshisha, the Pride and Patriotism Society.

Toyama handed out money to his followers on the streets in the manner of those before him, earning him the moniker Emperor of the Slums. Next he began enlisting the disgruntled youth of Fukuoka and created a workforce of disciplined and dedicated fighters.

Toyama made a move in 1881 upon the founding of the Genyosha, the Dark Ocean Society. According to the tenets of its charter, the Dark Ocean Society vowed to revere the imperial institution, love and respect the nation, and defend the people's rights.

Even with such vague intentions, Toyama exploited the passion of the ex-samurai for Japanese expansion and total rule. Toyama was able to successfully tap into this sentiment and create a strong political, paramilitary force. The work of the Dark Ocean Society, whose very name indicated expansion across the small divide of ocean between Japan and mainland Asia, was a campaign of strength.

Using blackmail, assassination, and other forms of terror as a catalyst, the Dark Ocean Society was successful in exerting influence over government officials and ultimately played a critical role in pushing Japan into mainland Asia and war with the United States.

An offshoot of the Dark Ocean Society, the Black Dragon Society was known for their espionage, sabotage, and assassination methods in Japan, China (especially in Manchuria), Russia, and Korea. The ultimate objective of the Black Dragon Society was domination of Asia. The natural successor of the Dark Ocean Society, the Black Dragon Society took over Dark Ocean followers along with Dark Ocean policies and goals. Under the patronage and guidance of the Dark Ocean

Society's Toyama, the Black Dragons pushed Japan into a victorious war with Russia, committed political assassinations, and helped create the conditions for a Japanese invasion of Asia. For 30 years, the Black Dragon Society flourished. They discouraged Japanese involvement in capitalism, democracy, and anything associated with the West.

In the 1920s, even during the Taisho democracy and the increase in Japan's liberalism, the Black Dragons grew. As a result the Japanese polity was overwhelmed by assassination, police repression, and an increasingly renegade military. Ultranationalist groups increased in power, even receiving money from the imperial family. The Black Dragon Society evolved into the paramilitary arm of a dominant political party.

Tanaka Giichi

Tanaka Giichi

Tanaka Giichi was a Japanese soldier, politician, and prime minister of Japan from April 20, 1927, to July 2, 1929. He was born on June 22, 1863. Tanaka served in the Japanese military in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and quickly parlayed a successful combat campaign into a rapid ascent to positions of greater power. In 1915 Tanaka took the position of subchief of Central Major State and in 1920 the rank of general.

Prime Ministers Hara Takashi (1918–21) and Yamamoto Gonnohyoe (1923–24) appointed him war minister. During his tenure, Tanaka supported the Siberian Expedition, sending Japanese troops to Russia. He officially retired from military service in 1921 in order to work with and later lead the Seiyukai political party.

Tanaka, like many of his contemporaries, emerged as a significant military voice after Japan's decisive victory over Russia and when Japan dealt with the fallout of its own modernization program. Thus, Tanaka in many ways symbolized the new and modern Japanese military mind.


By 1927 Giichi successfully gained the position of prime minister and served concurrently as foreign affairs minister. His foreign policy was both aggressive and interventionist. Most notably, Giichi intervened militarily in Shandong (Shantung), China, in 1927 in order to prevent Chiang Kai-shek from uniting the country. Domestically, he worked to suppress opposition and has been accused of manipulating elections in order to extend his rule.

He is the reputed author of the "Tanaka Memorial"—the Imperial Conquest Plan for the taking of Manchuria, Mongolia, the whole of China, and then the Soviet Far East and Central Asia. Japan claimed the plan was a forgery. What cannot be denied, however, is that the so-called Tanaka plan reflected much of the foreign policy of Japan during the 1930s and 1940s and ultimately led to World War II.

His fall came from within his own administration. His supporter Kaku Mori, with ties to two secret Japanese societies, the zaibatsu and radical groups, was able to influence him and his policies as prime minister—the implementation of interventionist policies toward both Manchuria and Mongolia.

Thus, Japan backed in 1928 the successful assassination of Manchurian warlord Zhang Zolin (Chang Tso-lin) in an attempt to seize Manchuria. Due to quick Chinese response, the plotters failed to seize Manchuria until 1931 as a result of the Manchurian incident. Giichi's political career came to an end with his signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

Opponents criticized him for exceeding his power and failing to take into account the sovereignty of the emperor. The failure in Manchuria and KelloggBriand led to his resignation and the succession of Hamaguchi Osachi as prime minister. He died on September 29, 1929.

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

The formal concept of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was announced at a press conference on August 1, 1940, by Japanese prime minister Matsuoka Yosuke. It was to be an autarkic bloc of Japanese-led Asian nations free from Western influence or control. Greater East Asia included both East Asia and Southeast Asia.

Japan's imperialist leaders regarded its values and ideals as superior to those of the rest of the world, including its East Asian neighbors. They took upon themselves the right to replace what they regarded as the conservative and negative influences of China and India within its borders. Japan would "civilize" the rest of Asia. The method chosen to spread the "benefits" of Japanese civilization was the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 brought Japan back into diplomatic contact with the West. Exposure brought awareness that the West far surpassed Japan technologically. Japanese leaders realized that to avoid the humiliation of being treated as a second-class country Japan would have to modernize on the Western model.


To develop a "rich economy and strong army," Japan began modernizing its political, economic, and military systems. As early as the 1880s Japanese intellectual leaders such as Fukuzawa Yukichi encouraged the idea that Japan had a manifest destiny to be Asia's leader. Imperialist groups such as the Black Dragon Society and Kita Ikki became popular forums for those who wanted to expel the foreigners.

Japanese Imperialism

Japan believed it had earned its right to be as imperialistic as Western nations. As a result, Japan began subjecting its neighbors to its rule. It expanded into Hokkaido, subdued the indigenous Ainu, established treaty ports with extraterritoriality in Korea, took the Ryukyus, and fought a successful war with China.

Expansion was to gain prestige, materiel, and markets, similar to the goals of imperialism of the Western nations. Indicating how successfully it had mastered the Western ways of imperialism and modernism, Japan beat Russia soundly in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.

But the Western nations still looked down on Japan, which it resented. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the Western powers rejected a Japanese demand for insertion of a racial equality clause in the League of Nations covenant.

As a result, Japan felt the need to prove that it was as superior. By 1932 Japan had subjected Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria to its control. The local populations of the conquered lands were exploited for the benefit of Japan.

After nearly half a century of conquest and exploitation, Japan enunciated the concept of the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as justification for its aggression. Anticipating a long struggle to develop the new Asia under Japan, its war planners established a multistage process to acquire resources of the region as follows: Raw materials and surplus food would come from the southern region, while Manchuria and North China would provide the resources for heavy industry. The remaining areas of the sphere and parts of Asia outside it would serve as Japan's market. Japan would oversee the whole by providing planning, tools, skills, and military control.

Geographic Boundaries

The geographic boundaries of the sphere were fluid, varying over time and political circumstance. They encompassed the Micronesian mandates and often Melanesia and Polynesia and consistently included Hawaii. It had three concentric rings.

The innermost one included Japan, Korea, and Manchuria. A second ring would include China and extend to Hawaii. A third ring would include whatever area was necessary to guarantee the total economic self-sufficiency of greater East Asia.

Areas of the sphere were divided into four categories. Some lands were to be annexed outright; they included Guam, Mindanao, and Hawaii. Others, including Indochina and the Dutch East Indies, were to become protectorates.

Some would be independent but would have unbreakable economic and defense bonds with Japan; these would be Hong Kong, Thailand, and the Philippines. The fourth group was independent states with economic ties to Japan; they would include Australia, New Zealand, and India.

Japan had economic rationale for enlarging the sphere. It felt heavy pressure to find sources to become economically self-sufficient due to a Western embargo on key resources. It needed the oil of the Dutch East Indies and the rubber of Indochina to support its industries and its military venture in China. It also justified its imperialism by a perceived need for guaranteed markets for its manufactured goods as well as space for colonization by its people.

The Japanese had to sell their exploitative venture to the exploited. Their slogan was "Asia for Asians," and their message was the imperative of freeing Asia from the Western yoke. They promised economic equity and growth. To provide cover for their conquest, they installed puppets, local people who had the power to declare independence from the Western powers but not the power to exercise independence from Japan.

On December 12, 1941, Japanese media announced that the just-begun war it had instigated by attacking the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands in Asia was the "Greater East Asia War," a crusade to rid greater East Asia of Chiang Kai-shek, communism, and Westerners.

Defeat by the United States and the Allies in 1945 ended Japan's imperial dream and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Hara Kei

Hara Kei (Hara Takashi)

Hara Kei (Hara Takashi) was a leading member of the Seiyukai political party in Japan in the early 20th century and the prime minister of Japan from 1918 to 1921.

Hara was born into a family of samurai background in northern Japan in 1856. After working in fields as diverse as diplomacy and journalism, Hara joined the Seiyukai, a political party founded by Ito Hirobumi in 1900, and quickly became one of its leading members.

Although political parties were the leading force in the lower house of Japan's parliamentary body, the Diet, the key posts in the Japanese cabinet, including the position of prime minister, remained dominated at the turn of the century not by party officials but rather by elder statesmen. Hara became one of the foremost champions of allying the Seiyukai with the cabinet.


In 1904, Prime Minister Katsura Taro needed Seiyukai support in the Diet for budget increases in order to fight the Russo-Japanese War. Hara and Katsura made a bargain whereby Hara delivered the necessary assistance in exchange for the future appointment of Seiyukai's president, Saionji Kinmochi, as prime minister.

Saionji eventually served twice as prime minister, from 1906 to 1908 and then from 1911 to 1912. As home minister in Saionji's first cabinet, Hara worked to strengthen the party by recruiting members of the civil bureaucracy into the organization.

In addition, he built support for the party beyond the ranks of officialdom by providing funds for local economic development. By increasing spending on local schools, roads, harbors, and transportation, he gained a following for the Seiyukai among the electorate.

Hara became president of the Seiyukai in 1914 and was selected to serve as prime minister of Japan in the aftermath of the well-known 1918 rice riots, marking the first time that a career party politician held that leading office in the Japanese government. Although Japan had undergone an economic boom as a result of World War I, those on the lower rungs of the social hierarchy struggled with inflation and falling wages.

Hara was in many ways the only leader with significant support in both the Diet's party-dominated lower house and its upper house, the House of Peers, still largely the preserve of nonparty elites, despite the fact that some upper-house delegates had joined political parties. His connections with nonparty elites proved vital to his accession to prime minister.

Upon becoming prime minister, Hara did not embark on a program of sweeping, wholesale changes. The tax qualification for voting was lowered in a move that doubled the size of the electorate, but most of the newly enfranchised were small landholders largely favorable to the Seiyukai.

In a more overtly partisan manner, Hara's government remapped electoral boundaries to benefit the Seiyukai, and his appointments within the bureaucracy were often made with blatantly partisan motives. His government likewise supported defense spending, and Hara made significant efforts to improve relations with the military leadership.

Responding to protests against Japanese imperial rule, Hara attempted to replace the military administrations of Japan's colonial holdings with civilian officials, though the military successfully resisted those efforts in Korea. He also called for assimilation of colonial populations, representation for colonies in the Diet, and the granting of greater civil liberties to colonials.

Hara's career came to a violent conclusion when he was assassinated by a right-wing fanatic in Tokyo Station in 1921, but Hara Kei had played an immensely important role in transforming the Seiyukai into a leading force in Japanese politics in the early 20th century.

Hirohito

Hirohito

Emperor Hirohito of Japan lived in an age of contradictions, caught between ancient traditions and modern realities. The 124th in the line of the longest dynasty the world has known, Hirohito saw the Japanese monarchy become purely ceremonial. Japan was modernized during his reign when he died after 63 years on the throne, the longest reign of modern monarchs.

The Japanese emperors were said to be direct descendants of the sun goddess who founded Japan more than 2,500 years ago. After World War II at U.S. demand, he issued a renunciation of any claims to his divinity after ruling over his country during one of its most militaristic periods.

Born on April 29, 1901, Hirohito was the first son of Crown Prince Yoshito, son of Emperor Mutsuhito (better known as the Meiji emperor). As was the custom with the royal household, while still a tiny infant Hirohito was taken from his mother to be reared by foster parents.


Count Kawamura, the foster father, was already 70 years old when he took the responsibility of rearing the royal infant, and he died when the child was three years old. At that time, Hirohito was returned to the residence of his parents, Akasara Palace. Even here, however, Hirohito was isolated from other children and from his parents. He rarely saw his unemotional father and visited his mother once a week.

In 1908 the young Hirohito was sent to Peers School, founded especially for males of noble birth, where he became interested in natural history and science. This interest developed into a passion for marine biology, a field in which Hirohito became a worldwide authority and on which he published eight books.

Meiji died in 1912 and was succeeded by Hirohito's father, the Taisho emperor; Hirohito, the heir apparent, became engaged to the daughter of a nobleman, Princess Nagako, in 1918, who became his only wife, bearing him five daughters and two sons.

As time magazine cover

In 1921 Hirohito, along with an enormous retinue, made an unprecedented visit to Europe. No other Japanese crown prince had ever visited another country. He was greatly impressed with what seemed to him the informality and freedom of the rulers, especially the British royal family. Later that year Hirohito was named regent for his father, who was declining mentally. In 1923 he survived an attempted assassination by a young radical.

At the age of 25 Hirohito became emperor of Japan. He chose the name Showa (Enlightened Peace) for his reign. Hirohito's grandfather had helped bring Japan into the modern world when he had dismantled the powers of the feudal shogun. When he came to the throne, Japan, like much of the world in the 1920s, was in the midst of growth and optimism.

However, in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s, Japan became more fascist and militaristic, with many assassinations and domestic unrest, culminating in an uprising in January 1936 during which Tokyo was under the direct command of military divisions. Hirohito acted swiftly to control the insurrection and punish the leaders, but Japan's military continued to gain strength.


Japan invaded China in 1937 without Hirohito's direct approval but also without his intervention. The emperor did not like the policies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, but he did not openly oppose Japan's alliance with them; he signed the declaration of war against the United States and the Allies in 1941. Hirohito's participation in events that led to and during World War II remain controversial due to the destruction of many documents immediately after Japan's surrender.

Evidence shows that while he was not instrumental in Japan's aggressions beginning in the 1930s, he was fully aware of Japan's wartime goals and methods and participated in key meetings and decision making. In 1945 Hirohito made his famous radio address asking his people to surrender. It was the first time that the public had ever heard his voice.

When the United States began its occupation of Japan, Hirohito accepted full responsibility for the war and offered to abdicate his throne. However, the Allies felt Japan's stability would be better preserved if the emperor remained.

Hirohito in his old age

As the figurehead ruler under the constitution promulgated in 1947, Hirohito had the luxury of devoting the remainder of his life to his scientific pursuits. He tried to establish a more open relationship with the people, and although he was a popular figure, he was awkward when meeting them.

Emperor Hirohito made two more foreign visits in his later years. In 1972 he traveled to Europe, and in 1975 he visited the United States. He died on January 7, 1989, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Crown Prince Akihito.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Hiroshima damage

By the summer of 1945, World War II in the Pacific was virtually over. Since December 1941, the United States had pushed Japanese forces back until only the homeland itself remained in Japanese control. The United States prepared to launch an invasion of Japan.

While preparing for the invasion, on July 26 U.S. president Harry S. Truman and British prime minister Clement Attlee, with Nationalist Chinese president Chiang Kai-shek concurring, issued the Potsdam Declaration calling for the unconditional surrender of Japan and listing additional peace terms. At this point Truman knew that the first atomic bomb test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, had been successful 10 days earlier.

The test was the culmination of a three-year highly secret project. The first man-made atomic reactor was built in a squash court at the University of Chicago in 1942. More sophisticated reactors were built at Hanford, where the plutonium was produced. The first test of the plutonium bomb was at Alamogordo on July 16, 1945.


Although the Potsdam Declaration made it clear to the Japanese that they could anticipate severe consequences if they chose to continue the war, Japan rejected the ultimatum. Truman ordered the use of the bomb. His secretary of war, Henry L. Stimson, regarded the use of the bomb as less abhorrent than sacrificing U.S. lives.

Truman's military advisers had indicated that the invasion of Japan could result in the loss of half a million U.S. soldiers plus millions of Japanese military and civilian lives. Truman wanted the war over, and he wanted the maximum possible blow in order to end the war without the invasion. The U.S. military selected Hiroshima and Kokura because the two were among the Japanese cities that had thus far escaped the destruction caused by U.S. and Allied bombs.

The ground crew of the B-29 'Enola Gay' which atom-bombed Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945, at 9:15 a.m. Tokyo time, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay, piloted by Paul W. Tibbets, dropped a uranium atomic bomb, "Little Boy," on Hiroshima. In minutes half of Japan's seventh-largest city was gone, and thousands of people were dead. Between 60,000 and 70,000 people were dead or missing, and 140,000 were injured.

On August 6 another bomb was prepared on Tinian Island. On August 9 the B-29 Bock's Car prepared to bomb Kokura. Smoke over the target caused pilot Sweeney to seek his alternate target, Nagasaki.

The industrial city of Nagasaki fell to the bomb "Fat Man" at 11:02 a.m. Exploded at 1,800 feet to maximize the impact of the blast, Fat Man leveled buildings, destroyed electrical systems, and generated fires. The bomb destroyed 39 percent of the city, killed 42,000, and injured 40,000.

Nagasaki being atom bombing

The two bombings killed 210,000 Japanese— 140,000 in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki, twothirds of them women, children, and elderly. Deaths to military and foreign workers are unknown. What is known is that the explosion rather than the radiation was the primary cause of death. Some 24 Australian prisoners of war about 1.5 kilometers from Nagasaki ground zero survived, many to old age.

The bombs produced fires, blast pressure, and extremely high radiation levels. Both were detonated about 600 meters aboveground, so the belowground contamination was minimal from the bombs. Subsequent rainfall deposited radioactive material east of Nagasaki and west and northwest of Hiroshima, but the great majority of the radioactive material was taken high into the atmosphere by the blasts themselves. The blasts also irradiated some stable metals—such as those found in metal roofs—for a day or two after the blast, but the damage was minimal.

In the cities victims died due to flash burns from the heat generated by the blast. People died when their homes burst into flames. Others were injured by flying debris. In Hiroshima a firestorm arose in the center of the devastation.

Hiroshima ruins

People within 300 yards of ground zero were vaporized, leaving their shadows on the streets. Blast and heat also stripped skin off bodies, sucked out eyeballs, and burst stomachs. Radiation deaths in subsequent years totaled about 120,000.

Severe radiation produced death within days. Severe radiation injuries were suffered by all persons within a one-kilometer radius. At between one and two kilometers distance injuries were serious to moderate, and slight injury affected those within two to four kilometers.

In addition to the 103,000 killed by the bombs in the first four months, another 400 died from cancer and leukemia over the subsequent 30 years. The bombs also produced birth defects and stillbirths. The children of survivors seem to have suffered no genetic damage. As of 2004, 93,000 exposed survivors were being monitored.

On September 2, 1945, the Japanese government surrendered unconditionally. Winston Churchill calculated that the bomb had saved the lives of 250,000 British and 1 million Americans.

Harry Truman's argument that the bomb would save half a million soldiers was unconvincing to critics, who in the years since have noted that the Japanese were prepared to ask for peace before the bombs were dropped and had already sought peace in previous months.

To these critics, the real reason for the use of the bombs was Truman's desire to frighten and impress the Soviet Union, which was already moving from ally to rival. Truman wanted to end the war before the Soviets could enter the Pacific War and stake a claim to a piece of the postwar settlement.

The Hiroshima bomb used 60 kilograms of highly enriched uranium-235 to destroy about 90 percent of the city. The Nagasaki bomb used 8 kilograms of plutonium-239. The bombs were a thousand times more powerful than any exploded previously.

Four years later the United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb, and it was not long before there were bombs a thousand times more powerful than the one that was dropped on Hiroshima. By the 1980s the world's arsenals included a million Hiroshima bombs. The Soviet Union tested its atomic bomb in 1949, and quickly Great Britain, France, and China joined the atomic community.

Beginning in the 1950s the emphasis was on the use of atomic energy for electricity and medical purposes. In the early 21st century 16 percent of the world's electricity, including that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, came from atomic power.

U.S. Occupation of Japan

U.S. Occupation of Japan

The U.S.-led occupation of Japan began at 8:28 a.m. on August 28, 1945, when U.S. army colonel Charles P. Tench of General Douglas MacArthur's personal staff stepped out of a C-47 Dakota transport onto the battered runway of Atsugi Airfield outside Tokyo, becoming the first foreign conqueror of Japanese soil in its thousand-year history.

Tench and his crew were followed two days later by 4,000 men of the 11th Airborne Division. On the same day, the U.S. 6th Marine Division began landing troops at the Yokosuka Navy Base as U.S. and British ships steamed into Tokyo Bay and MacArthur himself put the seal on World War II victory and the beginning of postwar occupation by landing in his aircraft at Atsugi saying, "Melbourne to Tokyo was a long road, but this looks like the payoff."

The occupation was planned concurrently with the invasion of the Home Islands in early 1945 by MacArthur's headquarters. The occupation plan was to demilitarize Japan so that it would never again threaten its neighbors and to create a democratic and responsible government and a strong, self-sufficient economy. Operation Blacklist was designed to bring about a sudden surrender or collapse of the Japanese government, realized with the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.


The operation called for a three-phase military occupation of Japan and Korea, with 23 divisions and supporting naval and air forces. The first priority would be to secure bases of operation, control the Japanese government, disarm its military, and liberate 36,000 Allied prisoners of war and internees who were close to death from starvation, torture, and abuse.

The Japan that surrendered in 1945 was an exhausted, stunned, and starving nation. Having never known defeat or occupation in their history, the Japanese now saw their institutions destroyed, agriculture and industry wrecked, and 2 million countrymen dead. Acres of major cities were in ruins, thousands homeless, the emperor abject, and the armed forces defeated and dishonored. It was a complete collapse.

With Japan's surrender, MacArthur was appointed supreme commander for the Allied powers in Japan under a U.S. State Department directive entitled "United States Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan." Instead of Japan's being divided into separate nationally administered zones, as was done in Germany, the fallen empire would continue as one nation under its existing government and emperor, subject to U.S.-led direction.

General Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito

Above MacArthur was the 11-nation Far Eastern Commission in Washington, established in December 1945, which was to make policy for the occupation and which could discuss and approve but not rescind previous U.S. decisions. Thus, in practice, despite Soviet complaints and demands for a share in the occupation, MacArthur had supreme power over Japan.

The first U.S. move after securing operating bases was to recover and repatriate prisoners from more than 140 camps across the Home Islands, airdropping supplies and sending out medical and transport teams to ring the survivors of Malaya and Bataan home. Nearly all of them were brought out by the end of 1945.

Meanwhile, some 250,000 occupying forces, including an Australian-led British Commonwealth occupation force of 36,000 Britons, Australians, New Zealanders, and Indians, fanned out across Japan. While the British force was assigned to southern Honshu and Shikoku Island (including Hiroshima), MacArthur banned Soviet troops from his occupation force.

With his headquarters at the Dai Ichi Building in Tokyo, MacArthur did not need to create a political structure to administer Japan. The nation's government was intact when it surrendered, so his directives were simply passed through his staff to the Japanese-established Central Liaison Office, which acted as intermediary between the occupation staff and the government ministries until the two groups developed working relationships.

After freeing the POWs, MacArthur moved to demobilize the battered Japanese war machine, whose 5.5 million soldiers, 1.5 million sailors, and 3.5 million civilian colonial overlords were still defending bypassed islands across the Pacific.

The Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy were converted into the First and Second Demobilization Bureaus, respectively, and administered the repatriation, disarming, and demobilization of these men. Most of this work was done by the Japanese under close Allied supervision.

Japanese warships, even the aircraft carrier Hosho, carried defeated troops home, making their final voyages before going to the scrap yard, where these ships were joined in destruction by tanks, kamikaze planes, midget submarines, and artillery shells of the once-mighty Japanese armed forces.

The United States also moved to break down the Japanese police state, decentralizing the police, releasing political prisoners, and abolishing the Home Ministry, which had controlled Japan's secret police agency, the Kempei Tai. With these changes in place, the United States was able by December 1945 to issue a Bill of Rights directive, which gave the Japanese U.S.-style civil liberties, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press.

The role of the emperor was also changed. Shortly after the surrender he met MacArthur, which enabled many Japanese to accept the new regime. In January 1946 Emperor Hirohito formally renounced his divinity, ending over a thousand years of Japanese tradition. He also began making public appearances in the style of Britain's royal family.

In April 1946 MacArthur ordered general elections as a referendum on the changes he planned. Three out of four Japanese went to the polls, including 14 million newly enfranchised women, to elect a free diet. The results supported a mildly liberal, prodemocracy government, an endorsement for his plans.

Next MacArthur directed the Japanese government to draft a constitution to replace the 1867 Meiji Constitution. While issued by the government in accordance with existing rules to change the constitution, this new document was drafted by MacArthur and his staff. It went into effect in May 1947.

The "MacArthur Constitution" created a parliamentary government, the Diet, with popularly elected upper and lower houses, a cabinet that held executive power, and a decentralized regional government of elected assemblies. The constitution also guaranteed basic freedoms.

Its most famous section was article nine, in which Japan forever repudiated war as a means of settling disputes and banned the maintenance of military forces. As a result, the modern Japanese armed services are called the Self-Defense Forces.

The United States also had to cope with a shattered economy. One-fourth of Japan's national wealth was lost to the war, prices had risen 20 times, and workers could barely afford to purchase what little food was for sale. Many people had to barter their possessions for fish.

MacArthur imposed numerous reforms on the Japanese economy. Believing that those who till the soil should own it, he had the Diet break up vast farms held by a few landlords. These farms were expropriated and sold cheaply to the former tenants.

MacArthur also worked to break up the commercial empires of the zaibatsu, or "money cliques," but this proved less successful. The large Japanese businesses were vital to the nation's economic rebuilding, and names like Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Honda, and Kawasaki, powerful before the war, remained so into the 21st century. Nevertheless, Japan's economy was rebuilt with speed and power.

MacArthur also rebuilt the Japanese education system by replacing nationalist curriculums and textbooks with more liberal materials, raising the school-leaving age, decentralizing the system, and replacing political indoctrination with U.S. and British ideals that supported independent thought.

MacArthur also liberated women by ending contract marriage, concubinage, and divorce laws that favored husbands. He also made high schools coeducational and opened 25 women's universities. The Japanese responded: 14,000 women became social workers, and 2,000 became police officers. Women filled up the colleges and new assemblies.

Changes wrought by the U.S. occupation were massive: Public health programs eliminated epidemics, U.S. police officials retrained Japanese policemen, and Japan's dull official radio programs of government speeches were replaced with a combination of public affairs shows, impartial newscasts, soap operas, and popular music, all of which attracted millions of listeners.

At the same time the Anglo-American presence in Japan did much to change Japanese society. The arrival of the occupation forces sent a shiver of fear through the Home Islands, fear that the dreaded gaijin—"hairy barbarians"—would rape, loot, and pillage, as Japanese soldiers had done in lands they conquered.

MacArthur gave strict orders regarding his troops' behavior but did not issue nonfraternization orders. As a result, U.S. soldiers were soon overcoming language barriers to play softball games against Japanese teams, playing tourist at Japan's many attractions, and giving out chewing gum and candy to ubiquitous Japanese children.

By 1947 the occupation had succeeded in its political and economic goals. Despite Soviet intransigence, Japanese society had been transformed. The combination of MacArthur's steely resolve, U.S. generosity, and Japanese industriousness and adaptability created the modern Japan, able to connect to both its historic roots and the Western world with its democratic values, economic systems, and advanced technology.

By March 1947 MacArthur himself said that the occupation was completed and began turning over control of the nation's affairs and policies to the Japanese. In 1951 the United States and most of its allies signed a peace treaty with Japan, ending an occupation that was generally conceded to have ended five years previously.