Japan Western relations before and after World war II Essay written for a grandchild.

This essay will be about World War II (WWII) and the time right before and after it. It will be necessary to deal with the war in Europe separately from that against Japan in the Pacific.

Once again it will be necessary to sketch the racist background; particularly for the Japanese war. For that it is necessary to go back to the years even before the First World War, in fact to go back to the nineteenth century.

In the late nineteenth century there is what is known as the period of colonialism meaning the establishment of colonies in Asia and Africa by the European countries (and to a lesser extent by the United States.) Note on the map of Africa how little of the continent is independent of Europe.

EUROPEAN COLONIES IN AFRICA EUROPEAN SPHERES OF INFLUENCE IN CHINA

Of course there was nothing new about colonies: The USA started as English colonies in America. The South and Central American countries and the islands of the Caribbean were all originally Spanish (mostly) or Portuguese colonies (though independent by this time.) The queen of England ruled India as its empress and all the major European counties had colonies in Africa. Africa and India are outside the scope of an essay about WWII because they play only a limited role in it but I include the map to show how dominant European power was.

One can be a bit confused by terminology (meaning of words). Properly, a colony is an area directly ruled by a mother country but there are many gradations. One very popular term is a protectorate. The Khedive of Egypt was ruler in that country so long as he did what England wanted him to. Since some local leaders were more interested in their own comforts than the welfare of their people that could be a very cozy relationship for the European colonizers. In some cases the colonial power cared more for the good of the native population than did their own rulers (but not always). (Especially in North Africa and among the maharajah rulers of India who continued to have a lot of power even after England began to rule directly.) There are still a few protectorates but now authorized by the United Nations, generally groups of small islands. Since the end of WWII, however, most colonies have either been granted independence from their European mother country or have won it by wars of liberation.

Colonial relationships were very complicated. In protectorates there was a native government but with parts of its country (usually port cities) directly under foreign control and much of the rest subject to foreign armies moving about it wherever they wished (a sphere of influence.) The French took over control of what is now known as Indochina. Belgium had a horrendous colony in Africa. Germany also had colonies in Africa, the Pacific area, and a sphere of influence in China. The spheres of influence that were to influence Japan were those in China of Germany, England, France, Italy, Austria, the USA, and Russia. There was a famous war known as the Boxer Uprising in which Chinese rebels tried to throw out the foreigners. The result was the complete collapse of the last Chinese dynasty (family of rulers) which had tried to use both the rebels and the foreigners for its own advantage. For years afterwards there was no real central government in China. Various areas were under the control of powerful men that we call warlords. China was a mess. In the following years other countries gave up their spheres of influence in China though they remained influential with the warlords, but Japan remained.

Not many years before this Admiral Perry (of whom you will learn in school) opened Japan to the West. For over two hundred years it had been closed to foreigners except for a very limited number of merchants who were permitted to do business in a single district of a single city. Otherwise the shogunate government of Japan had not allowed foreigners to enter that country.

When Perry showed up with a fleet of warships the Japanese were forced to allow westerners in. Most important, until then the country had been ruled by a man known as a shogun. The Japanese emperors who had reined but usually not actually ruled since almost seven hundred years before the birth of Christ were effectively only the religious figurehead of the country. Now The great emperor Meiji took power from the last shogun after defeating armies that supported him. Western styles in clothing, food, etc. became popular. The new leaders were determined that the country would be modernized, westernized, and industrialized so that what was happening in China and elsewhere would not happen there. The Japanese would retain their emperor, their religion, and the best of their culture but look toward the future not try to hold onto the past as the Chinese dynasty had done. There would be no spheres of influence in Japan. From that time on Japan thought of itself as much as a Western as an Asian nation.

The Japanese knew that in order not to fall under the power of European countries Japan must itself be the most powerful country in eastern Asia. In a series of wars Japan had taken over control of the large island of Formosa (Taiwan) from the Chinese and defeated China in a war for control of Korea. It's most spectacular victory was when this new power defeated the Russian navy in the battle of Tsushima and grabbed Russia's sphere of influence in China. After World War One Germany was required to give up its colonies; Japan grabbed the former German sphere of influence in China.

Japan began to expand in China seizing the large area of Manchuria and setting up a puppet government there. (a Manchurian government controlled by the Japanese.) Here is where it came into direct conflict with America and European countries. Who would control Asia: Japan or the Western nations? The map shows the spheres of influence. What it does not make clear is that nearly the whole of the most important and populous parts of China are along the coast and belonged to spheres of influence. The part indicated as the Chinese Empire is rather barren.

The situation was made worse by racism on both sides. The typical American or European's attitude towards Asians were that they were nearly subhuman. Japan's actions did not help. Although Japan made some effort to behave in war according to Western standards when fighting the West, it behaved brutally in China. This was nothing new or any different from past wars among Asians. The Chinese would have behaved the same toward Japanese had they been invading. Chinese history boasts of the thousands of heads that were cut off after battles. Nonetheless, Japanese brutality in China shocked westerners and cemented in their minds a view of the Japanese as brutal and merciless. This was reinforced by Japanese propaganda to its own people as being superior, fanatically dedicated to the emperor, and without any thought for one's own welfare.

As Japan developed during the early twentieth century the government there became dominated by an extreme army faction. It is hard to know today just how much the Emperor Hirohito effected developments. After WWII for political reasons it was taught both in Japan and in the USA that he had little to do with it since the Japanese constitution did not allow him any real political power. More recently some historians have claimed that this was a cover to provide him with what is called plausible deny-ability. Plausible denyability means that a person has no direct link with something and can therefore not be blamed although unofficially he might have caused it. My own suspicion is that Hirohito was no more or less involved than others. There was a general agreement among Japanese leaders of the broad outlines of the problem of Japanese survival as a fully independent nation. They agreed that this required military expansion throughout the eastern Pacific and the need to use military force to maintain it.`

THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT DURING WORLD WAR IIAs can be seen on the map the Japanese empire before and during WWII expanded over a huge part of the Pacific ocean. There were two reasons. (1) Japan has few natural resources. It needed raw materials from other places to maintain its economy and fight the war with China. (2) It also saw the benefit of a deep line of military installations throughout the pacific to prevent foreign attack. It would not be realistic for England, France, the Netherlands, or the USA to send a force against Japan from the home country. Bases near Japan would be necessary for them so Japan wanted to occupy the Pacific islands so possible enemies would not.

RACIST CARACTERATURE OF SNEAKY JAPANESE

But this all conflicted with what the western nations wanted and thought they had a right to. (Remember that the West still thought of itself as the only great civilization. Asians were pagan barbarians who like the Africans were like children who had to be taught western ways and Christianized.) Western industries also needed the rich natural resources in places like Indochina and Burma and Borneo. They were supported by western prejudice. You will recall from my essay on racism that there were racist Asian exclusion laws in the USA and that typically Americans thought of Japanese as little slant eyed monkeys who could not be trusted and were racially inferior. Of course some might acknowledge some good things about Japan like art and philosophy that they really didn't understand or relate to but few Americans really knew much about Japan and not knowing and not wanting to know is the fundamental of prejudice. It was similar to the white attitude toward native Americans. We might tell stories of the noble savage and make nice paintings of Indians and call athletic clubs after them but did not mix socially or trust an Indian or think he was as civilized or the equal of a white. How would you expect the Japanese a very proud people to react to our Japanese exclusion laws?

All this brought conflict over China. Japan needed the resources of South East Asia to fight their war in China; but France, the USA, England, and the Netherlands supported the Chinese warlords against the Japanese in order to protect their own investments in China. Europe refused to sell oil from the Dutch East Indies to Japan for its China war. The USA also refused.(Note that during WW II France and the Netherlands were conquered by Germany, Japan's ally, so they did not take part in the war against Japan. But the British Empire did. Canadians and South Africans who belonged to the British Commonwealth fought alongside of British and Americans against Germany in Europe, and Australians and New Zealanders fought alongside Americans and British against Japan in the Pacific.)

Meanwhile the Japanese were beginning to think they were invincible. Japan had never lost a war. During the middle ages the great Mongol emperor Genghis Khan had twice tried to invade from China and twice his huge fleets had been destroyed by hurricanes and the survivors killed by Japanese warriors. They were sure that the gods protected their country. They had taken a huge part of China and were winning the Chinese war elsewhere. Not many years before, they had embarrassed the West by defeating Russia. It was easy to believe that the westerners did not have their fighting spirit. Very few army leaders in Japan had traveled to Europe or the United States. They had no idea of the industrial power that the USA could bring to war. They only saw how quickly they themselves were developing a great naval and air power. Something called the code of Bushido (proper behavior of a warrior) became like a religion among them. It required total loyalty to the emperor. One's own life meant nothing. These army leaders persuaded their countrymen of this code and believed that such dedication was more important than the industrial might of the West. They wanted a Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere which would be an all Asian group of countries under Japanese leadership (actually control) which would drive the Westerners from Asia. They wanted Western technology but not western intrusion in Asian affairs. In reality the Japanese treated their conquered partners as badly or worse than the Europeans had.

CARTOON OF A NOBLE JAPANESE SAMURAI DEFEATING HUGE BUT AWKWARD CHINA.

There were a few who disagreed. These were men who had seen the USA and were not blinded by fanaticism. Two were politicians who were sent to the USA shortly before WWII to try to negotiate peace if it was possible to get it on Japan's terms, but also to get them away from Japan so that they could not interfere with the army leaders' plans. Another was Admiral Yamamoto who actually planned the attack on Pearl Harbor that began war between the USA and Japan. Despite his doing the best he could for his country he really did not believe that Japan could win. He had lived in the USA and knew that Japan had only a slight chance of winning the war. It would have to do so in the first year of the war before the USA could start building the huge numbers of ships and planes that it did and this depended upon something that Japan could not control. The only way that the USA and England might be forced to make peace quickly was if Hitler was winning his war against England in Europe. But when, a few months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler attacked Russia before defeating England that wouldn't happen and the USA could if necessary wait to finish off Japan until after Germany was defeated. Famously, when Admiral Yamamoto was congratulated after the successful attack on Pearl Harbor he said that he feared that Japan had only awakened a sleeping tiger.

Very unfortunately for the Japanese people this fanatical belief that their dedication and racial superiority could withstand American industrial might cost them dearly. US marines were just as brave as the Japanese and in time acquired more and better weapons. There was a very important sea battle near Midway island in which US planes sank three of Japan's biggest aircraft carriers to the loss of one of ours. We could build more carriers, Japan could not. We were also building battleships, cruisers, and destroyers to fight the Japanese navy; and submarines that were sinking Japanese merchant ships. Now Japan could no longer move oil from south-east Asia to where it needed it for its remaining warships and planes or move its troops to where the fighting was. Its best pilots had been killed because they flew until they were shot down (Japan needed to win in one year) whereas good US pilots trained new pilots. (We expected a long war.) Now Japan did not have enough planes or pilots and the new American planes were better than the aging Japanese designs. With the Japanese navy destroyed, American marines took one Japanese occupied island after another to get close enough to Japan for our heavy bombers to attack the Japanese homeland.

This is a very sad time. Thousands of young Japanese soldiers threw themselves against US Marines or fought fanatically from holes knowing that they could not win but that the Japanese honor code forbid them to surrender. The only chance Japan might have to convince the USA to negotiate a peace instead of fighting for total victory was to sink our ships that were carrying the marines and discourage our people. Extremely brave but very poorly trained young Japanese kamikaze pilots who could not win a conventional air battle tried to crash their bomb carrying planes into US ships. Many succeeded but not enough to change the course of the war.

According to Japanese propaganda to its own people the Americans were barbarians who would even eat Japanese babies. It was easy for the Japanese soldiers to believe such rot for they themselves had done awful things. They may not have eaten children in China but they did cut off captives heads and beat and starve them. They used prisoners for bayonet (knife) practice and were even known to bayonet babies in order to harden their own troops to the brutality of war. (I would like to not have to write these things but you will hear of them from people who make no effort to understand. Unfortunately terrible things did happen. Let me take a moment to talk about Japanese brutality. It happened; there is no denying that. Japanese troops were taught never to surrender and that American troops who they captured were cowards who had betrayed their own country by giving up and were unfit to live. They could be treated cruelly and killed for almost no reason at all. But in defense of the Japanese soldiers I want to point out that compared to the behavior of Asian soldiers in the past and their current treatment of Chinese they were making some slight effort to fight America by Western rules. They did not just kill all prisoners as they had in China. Even though they gave the prisoners very little food there was very little for their own soldiers either. Generally they did keep them (barely) alive except when they wanted to make an example of one. At least one Japanese general was executed for war crimes after the war. Throughout the war Japanese treatment of Americans was brutal but generally better than the way they treated other Asians. In other words, they made some effort to fight westerners by western rules but not other Asians. Note too that Japanese officers regularly beat their own troops for very slight reason. These were tough farm boys not the educated Japanese that we generally see in America today.)

Americans of my generation were taught the brutality of what is known as the Bataan death march. The Philippine Islands were an American possession before the war. (We took them from Spain in the Spanish American War in the late nineteenth century.) The USA had promised independence to the Philippines and begun to train a Philippine army under General MacArthur. When The Japanese attacked the Philippines early in the war the US and Philippine troops were forced back to the island of Corrigidor where there was a great fortress. It took months for the Japanese to conquer Corrigidor. Afterward the captured American and Filipino troops were forced to march sixty miles through the jungle to Bataan. Many died from disease or their wounds but many others were killed by Japanese soldiers just because they were weak. Americans were justly angry at this treatment of captive prisoners. What few Americans know because it was not in our interest to say so during the war was that this maltreatment was done by Japanese soldiers who had not fought the Americans and who believed the rot about being superior and that good soldiers should never surrender. The Japanese soldiers who actually defeated the Americans had treated them well. They knew from bloody experience that the Americans were not cowards. Many were wounded, all were starving, and they had practically run out of bullets to fight with. They had not surrendered; their officers had surrendered them and they were obeying orders when they laid down their guns.

Very very few Japanese soldiers surrendered, in part because of propaganda about how we would treat them but mostly because they were not allowed to. Japanese propaganda depicted American soldiers as such monsters that when we invaded the Japanese Island of Okinawa not only did the defending soldiers die rather than be captured but women and old men jumped to their deaths off cliffs after throwing their children down first.

Japanese fanaticism caused many Japanese deaths. Japanese homes were basically wood and paper. American bombers destroyed them in terrible firebomb raids. Our Air force showed no mercy and few Americans would have wanted to. Whatever the provocation, Japan had started the war with a sneak attack on our fleet at Pearl Harbor. Their treatment of prisoners was inhuman. Our sons were being drafted by the millions to die on far away beaches that few Americans had ever heard of. Japs were inhuman slant eyed buck-toothed pagans who ate rice and raw fish and came out of caves and holes on places like Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Luzon, and Tarawa to kill Americans. They rarely took prisoners and by our standards terribly mistreated the ones that they did take.

Compared to this the war with Germany was fought by the rules. Although the Nazi SS tortured and murdered Jews, generally the German army fought by the book. We did not mistreat German captives and they did not mistreat American soldiers. But life for German civilians could be terrible. In the European war we also firebombed cities. By the end of the war Americans hated Germans but had always hated Japanese more. It was the intention of the victorious nations to make life miserable for the losers. There would not be abuse such as the Nazis and Japanese had inflicted on civilians but the enemy would be kept poor and unable to start a war again. We would feed the starving people of Germany and Japan but only enough to keep them alive. Their industries would be destroyed and thousands of people guilty of war crimes were to be tried and imprisoned or executed. That was the allied plan. It didn't happen though and that has been a very good thing for everyone.

With our military closing in on the Japanese home islands and Japanese cities under nightly firebomb attack, America dropped atom bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most people think that changed the mind of the Japanese military leaders. It didn't. The USA was intending to invade Japan but though the Japanese Empire had been destroyed the home islands were still protected. Japan still had thousands of Kamikazes and its people were ready to fight the invaders with spears if necessary. We expected to lose hundreds of thousands of troops who would be killed or wounded. The Japanese people would not willingly have allowed the emperor to be tried as a war criminal or stop fighting if he was executed. We might have been able to occupy Japan by day but at night Americans would be killed a few at a time as they went about their work. Pacifying Japan could have taken ten years or more so long as the Japanese still revered their emperor. The Atom Bombs did not change the minds of the politicians or the army officers. Those who had felt before the atomic bombings that Japan had to surrender were still not able to have their way. Those who wanted to continue the war still did.

Then the emperor Hirohito saved Japan from millions of more deaths. Under the Japanese constitution he had no political authority but he still embodied the spirit of the country in himself. He risked his own life to go on radio to surrender the country. He had been considered a god descended from the sun god thousands of years ago. Now he was telling his people that they must endure the unendurable. Japan surrendered and a few weeks later he left his palace and went to General MacArthur's headquarters. It must have been a humiliation for this god. He offered to take full responsibility for the war which could have meant the allies trying and executing him for planning aggressive war. But MacArthur needed the emperor's help if there was to be real peace. They appeared to be photographed together. Clearly MacArthur is in charge but he called Hirohito the first gentleman of Japan. That must have been humiliating for the Japanese who thought of the emperor as a god but it was too respectful in the view of most Americans who considered him to be a war criminal. Fortunately American propaganda had always held the Japanese prime Minister Hideki Tojo as the person most responsible for the war. It was he, not Hirohito, who was usually caricatured with Hitler and Mussolini in our propaganda. Hirohito ordered his government and people to cooperate with MacArthur.

MACARTHUR WITH HIROHITO HITLER AND TOJO

This made it possible for Americans to swallow hard and allow Hirohito to remain as emperor though without any but moral power. In the following years this man who most Japanese had never seen before went around to factories and schools looking very uncomfortable but showing by his example that the unendurable could be endured.

In the years following the war the United States and the Soviet Union (Russia) became enemies. We never directly fought each other but there was a Cold War. The Russians (Soviets) tried to force the western nations out of their zones of occupation in Berlin and began a war between North and South Korea. American troops were almost driven out of Korea but air strikes by our warplanes based in Japan helped stop the North Korean invasion. American troops who were occupying Japan were rushed into combat in Korea. Japan became a base for the USA. Now we needed the Japanese and the Japanese by now had learned that we were not monsters. Very soon American soldiers were making friends with Japanese. I once knew a guy who had been an American soldier during the occupation of Japan. He came back with a great love for everything Japanese. Knowing Japanese people had removed his stereotyped images of Japan. I will not say that individual American soldiers did not commit crimes against Germans and Japanese and get away with them. It happened; but there was never a policy to punish the German and Japanese except for a few who had clearly committed war crimes. A couple of Japanese generals were executed who may not have deserved to be but we are talking about a very few people not thousands. After all, tens of thousands of Americans had died; at least someone had to be punished.

In Germany the situation between German civilians and American soldiers was very tense for awhile. Germany had no emperor to tell the people to endure the unendurable. The German people had been defeated but they still thought of us as enemies and we felt the same toward them. Russia changed that overnight by trying to force the allies (France, England, and the USA) out of Berlin. At the end of the war Germany had been divided into zones of occupation: one directed by the Soviets and the three others by the USA, France, and England. Berlin was within the Russian zone but because it had been the German capital it also was divided into four zones. The Russians tried to force the allies out by stopping railroad traffic and road traffic through their zone to it. Winter was coming on and there was very little food or coal for the people of Berlin. President Truman did something totally unexpected. He ordered US planes which a few months earlier had been dropping American troops to fight the Germans to now bring food and coal to Berlin. England joined too. Our pilots even dropped candy for the German children who had never had any candy before (during the war years). Eventually the Russians gave up and allowed road traffic back in but the German attitude of sullenness toward Americans had quickly changed and we have been firm friends and allies since.