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PROGRAMME INFO |
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Below are some people who lived through early post-war period in Japan. |
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Top-left: General Douglas MacArthur
General Douglas MacArthur was 65 years old when he flew into Atsugi Naval Air Base and began the Occupation. The “American shogun” wielded almost total power over the defeated nation; but he was careful to ensure that the occupying forces acted with magnanimity and avoided acts of vengeance. Controversially, he cultivated a relationship with Emperor Hirohito, believing this would help ensure stability. He rarely left Tokyo and never met Japanese apart from a small coterie of senior officials. In 1950, he became commander of the allied powers in the Korean War and in 1951 he was sacked by President Truman for near insubordination. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese lined the streets to bid him farewell. His successor for the last 8 months of the Occupation was the little-remembered General Matthew Ridgeway.
Top-right: Teru Chiba
Teru Chiba was a Tokyo schoolteacher who was evacuated to the countryside, along with her pupils, because of the wartime bombing of the capital. She remembers spending most of her time trying desperately to find food for the children to eat. Despite the humiliation of Japan’s defeat, she remembers her happiness that it meant her pupils would live. She also praises the Occupation authorities for their efforts to give equal rights to women. Now 91, she lives in Tokyo where she still works as a teacher of traditonal calligraphy.
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Top-left: Sadao Matsua
Sadao Matsua is a lifelong Communist activist who worked as a schoolteacher during the Occupation. He helped organise the massive May Day strike of 1946 and had high hopes that the American authorities would destroy feudalism and the Imperial system. However, with the start of the Cold War, the Occupation began the “reverse course,” cracking down on the left. Matsuda was frequently arrested and his wife was forced out of her job as a schoolteacher in the “Red Purge.” Still a Communist, he is now a publisher, issuing the complete works of Marx, Engels, Mao and Stalin.
Top-Right: Kazuo Chiba
Kazuo Chiba was in a Naval intelligence unit near Hiroshima when the atom bomb fell in August 1945 and saw the mushroom cloud rising above the city. When Japan surrendered he returned to Tokyo and worked in a trading company. His main memory of the early years of the Occupation is simply of hunger and the continual struggle to find food. He praises MacArthur for his decision to support Emperor Hirohito. If the Occupation had harmed the Emperor, he would have tried to kill an American in revenge. Chiba went on to study at the prestigious University of Tokyo, join the Foreign Ministry and become ambassador to Britain
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Top-left: Noboru Ando
Noboru Ando trained in the kamikaze submarine corps, then rose to prominence as a postwar gangster and black marketeer. He and his gang controlled the major Shibuya black market in Tokyo, trading goods bought illegally from the military stories via American intermediaries. The huge profits were split with GIs and other Americans who worked with him. “It was funny how much money you could make,” he recalls with a chuckle. Ando became notorious after effectively ordering a murder hit over an unpaid debt. Ando was jailed for 6 years. He wrote a best-selling autobiography and after his release played himself in a movie based on his book.
Top-right:Peggy Hayama
Peggy Hayama became a fan of American jazz as a schoolgirl, secretly listening to armed forces radio, falling in love with the sounds of Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller and especially Doris Day. She joined an amateur jazz band and despite her father’s opposition went to sing at a US base in Yokohama. She went down a storm and started singing regularly for the GIs. She has particularly happy memories of being given plates of mouth-watering fried chicken by a fan in the Army kitchen. Peggy Hayama became Japan’s top female jazz vocalist and is still singing and recording.
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BOOKS
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the aftermath of World War II, John Dower, Penguin 1999
Japan in War and Peace, John Dower, The New Press
Dear General MacArthur: Letters from the Japanese during the American Occupation
Rinjro Sodei, Rowman and Littlefield 2001
The Donald Richie Reader, Donald Richie, Stonebridge Press 2001
The Only Woman in the Room, Beate Sirota Gordon, Kodansha 1998
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the aftermath of World War II ,John Dower, Penguin 1999
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RELATED LINKS |
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The Prange Collection of Occupation-era writings and memorabilia
The Korean War Project
Bibliography of books about MacArthur and the Occupation
The MacArthur Memorial
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