The Bloodless Occupation of Japan

...conquering American...

...In the department stores as in Macy's I bumped into men and women and automatically murmured apologies, and they bowed low and asked equal indulgence...

...William Van Antwerp, head of G-2 of the 27th (New York) Division on Okinawa, told the writer of interviewing Okinawa natives who could not be dissuaded from their certainty that they would be tied to the treads of American tanks und crushed to death...

...Literally, within a few hours soldiers found they had no reason for apprehension...

...People Are Pacific By Les Finnegan New Leadtr Far Eattem Corretpondent TOKYO (Delayed)—American military authorities arr «tili bewildered it the "uneventfiilness'' of the occupation of Japan...

...as they lined the roads, who signified the flaw...

...The Japanese cops during these first few days of occupation saluted correspondents as well as officers, traveling on foot or in jeeps...

...This, then, was the emotional pattern that American troops were warned against...

...We waited for the reaction of the adults in Yokohama and Tokyo...

...There was no anti-fraternization ban in Japan as was imposed in Germany...

...But not a aingle American soldier was killed or ahot at during* the early occupation...

...The Americans wandered through the bombed-out streets, through department stores, singly and in groups...

...they teemed to take it for granted that the...

...Rut we had no way of knowing whether, if we spoke up, our throats wouldn't be cut an hour afterward...

...Civilians, cops, war plant officials- amiable to a fault...

...Time and again thia was impressed on me by workers and former leaders of the defunct trade unions and liberal groups: "There could have been a revolution or the beginning of one," said Nakari Shono, a youth leader of the Nippon Sim keito (Japan Social Party), "if we had any way of knowing that surrender was so close...

...They stared, as politely aa it is possible to stare politely, at the awkward American negotiations...

...American soldiers who had fought on Okinawa knew also that the effect of Japanese propaganda was no less potent omnng the civilians than among the armed forces...

...Severe ? in...

...Kven correspondents who never shot a gun in their lives were issued revolvers.- G-2 (Intelligence) officers lectured on the methods by which unrelenting hatred of Americans had been pounded into the Japanese, aoldiers and civilians alike, in...

...Within a period of just two or three Weeks previous to the signing of the surrender on the Missouri, most of the Japanese homeland population had to make mental and emotional adjustments to a reality that was in direct contradiction to everything they had been led to believe...

...More recently, in Nigeria, Britain's largest African colony, the government workers revolted against starvation wages and called a general strike involving 150,000...

...Inarticulate, they were convinced that their suffering would grow worse if resistance was continued on the four main Japanese Islands and on the Aalatie mainland...

...Many of the troops on Okinawa, waiting for the 450-mile jump to Japan, knew of Japaneae fanaticism at first hand...

...And, bearing this out, there were suicides before the Imperial Palace...

...If you want us to become a democratic nation," one youth leader told me, "a nation capable of holding its own among other peaceful nations and incapable of waging war, you can't for your own security trample us under foot and prevent democracy from emerging immediately...

...would grant them a degree of dignity...

...The correspondents looked sheepish, wandering around with useless revolvers on their hips...

...there were instances of "certain-death" charges by Japanese troops, on isolated islands, who were surrounded by U. S. forces but had already heard by radio of the Emperor's broadcast...

...It was thought inevitable that there would be aome fanatics who could not accept national ignominy and would take pot-shots at American troops...

...Files of Japanese newspapers still available in Tokyo relate "authenticated'* stories of American atrocities...

...At any rate, today even with the millions of demobilized Japanese soldiers and sailors flooding into the metropolitan areas, not a single instance of friction between American occupation troops and the Japanese has come to light...

...The Japanese people, especially the worker* (and what pitifully little leadership they had...

...Fraternization began quickly...

...were eager for peace...

...There was absolutely no surlirress, no resentment, not even aloofness...

...American intelligence knew that the mnie fears had been inculcated daily on the home front- Americans had a superman complex...

...Moreover, Army intelligence knew that the homeland population had been told repeatedly by their military leaders that in the event of invasion, death would be a thousand limes preferable to submission to unspeakable American brutalities With this idea as the theme, frenzied mass demonstrations were held throughout the country with emotional, Shinto-istic appeala to the sanctity of Japanese soil and the Emperor's person...

...Tiiey *cre stunned by the Emperor's broadcast...

...The cops, many of them ex-solders, weren't just affable...

...The lliitish Governoi used every tactic of delay imaginable until the sit nation lai »nie acute...

...When American soldiers, without a Nisei or interpreter, couldn't find their way to a street or a store, the Japanese policeman would frequently jump on the running-board of the car and by hand gestures indicate the direction and corner turns...

...Others firmly believed that the Americans would cut them into small pieces and feed them to the K-9 (dog) Corps...

...The Japs are either the most disciplined or the most deceitful people In the world...

...they knew of instance after instance of bloody self-destruction by Japanese aoldiers, either individually or in (roups...

...G-2 in Tokyo disco/ered that B'limese natives and even Japanese troops on the Indu Chinese coast had he*n told that San Francisco had been u*en...

...Home guard organizationa were formed, Japanese women, who before the war hardly ever took any part in national life, were given military training...

...In department stores on the (iinza thoroughfare, Japanese clustered around to watch the bargaining between Nisei interpreters for the Americans and Japanese salesgirls...

...Many U. S. Army officers in TokveV as well as correspondents are still baffled and contend that Japanese affability ia either consummate deceit or the heartfelt desire for peace of a people that ia sick to death of war after eight years of il...

...New York bombed...

...Army intelligence has pointed out that the vast majority of Japanese, no matter how impoverished the home, have radios designed to hear Japanese propaganda broadcasts and nothing else...

...Japan was already knocked out, long before the atomic bomb or the Soviet's entrance...

...One elderly woman flung herself hysterically at questioning officers and, offered herself for rapt instead of her 'teen-age daughter...

...they were terrorists, arsonists, rapists, torturers...

...We could have solidified ourselves so thst there would have been a good anti-Shinto group to select a new cabinet from...

...Ultimately, the workers' organization, gaining tactical experience and leathering strength, forced through its demands...

...It wasn't necessarily the little kids in the farm sections from Atsugi airport to Yokohama (Tokyo was still out of bounds) who held up their fingers in the "V" .signal and yelled "Hi, Joe...

...The last point, obedience to the Emperor's will, is credited by many G-2 officers in Tokyo as the prime explanation for the bloodless occupation of Japan...

...3—Because of their Shlntoism they are so well disciplined to obedience to their Emperor's will that they obeyed implicitly his command to preserve their national dignity by collaborating with the dictates of the occupation commander...

...There might even be organized resistance on a small scale...

...snom pauied the struggle and si least nine workers were killed and hundreds injured...

...On top of all this psychological preparation for a fight lo-the-death, was the appalling fact that great masses of the Japanese people were not aware of the imminence of surrender...

...They were probably conditioned by the first token force, two days before, that threw them chocolate and parts of ? rations...

...So far, according to General MaeArthur, not a single American soldier has been killed by snipers, fanatics, or oppoaiton of any kind...

...KRY U.S...

...inert...

...British Colonial Labor It Stirring O In Uganda, when Ibe soaring st of living had brought great suffei mg, the workers recently demanded hm increase...

...The shock was violent...

...But the people, on the Tokyo streets were the opposite of the types that correspondents were led to expect when they were provided with revolvers...

...Attracted by the youngsters, adults gathered around, and correspondents, referring to the little handbook of Japanese idioms provided by the Army, entered into a wild, gesticulating conversation...

...On the streets of Tokyo and in Yokohama, the civilians showed no resentment even after the first day's appearance of American troops...

...They should have turned their backs to us, as we were told the Japanese nurses did in the Hiroshima hospitals when American officers first went through the atomic bombed city...

...Anticipating everything and anything in the way of armed opposition, the first occupation troops, the 11th Airborne Division, landed at the Atsugi Airport literally armed to the ears...

...All of it added up to the wisdom of precaution: there would inevitably be hot-heads, snipers...

...isu nt I ? "for four years...

...In front of the Bund Hotel in Yokohama correspondents sat on the wall hedging Tokyo Bay and emptied their pocket-books for the amusement of Japanese kids...

...we must resign ourselves, t" 'i The Japanese masses are thunder struck by their calamity...

...officer in Tokyo Is convinced with Admiral Nimitz that it was neither the atomic bomb nor the Kusaian e, declaration ol *ar that brought unconditional surrender...

...There are several explanations why there wasn't sniping or armed opposition to the American occupation: 1—The ancient Japanese fatalism: the gods have ordained this temporary change of fate...

...Life Magazin» (Oct, >) quoted its photographer, J. R. Kyerman, following a trip to devastated Hiroshima, as saying: "It is a significant sidelight on the Japanese character that an unarmed American could travel through unoccupied Japan to Hiroshima 80 days after the blast, talk with defeated soldiers and victims of the blast and And no evidence of surliness, resentment or (ear...

...In the Ishika-wsjima Airplane Motor plant near Yokohama, one of the few places in the Tokyo area where war posters were not torn down prior to U.S...

...occupation, I saw color posters of Japanese women in slit-trenches with belts of hand grenades trapped around their waists...

...EvEN before the 11th Airborne Division arrived in Yokohama and Tokyo, and before MaeArthur set foot on Japanese soil, correspondent* were aware that Japanese "thought control" was not working as expected...

...that Japanese troops were pushing eastward beyond *· Koekiea...

...And what impretted American offieert wan tint they were nut obtequiout, never tyto-ph a u tic...

...The British Governor, using stringent, repressive military measures, it defeating the demand of the colonial workers for a minimum wage of fifty rents a day...

...inevitably there would be Japanese who believed, as one general told me in Manila, that the sacred Emperor was forced into this surrender, and that he would not disapprove of any reprisals that would prove that Japan never really surrendered: that the Emperor succumbed only for the salvation of his people...

...Two newapapers which presumed to support the strike were promptly suppressed...

...MaeArthur never felt it necessary...

...they had no way of knowing insignia...

...The complete bafflement of American correspondents, over the pacific attitude of the Japanese populace 1· reflected repeatedly in "news stories from Tokyo...

...The workers called a general strike...