Guided Revolution: The Occupation of Japan 1945–52

When he announced the surrender of Japan on 15 August 1945, the emperor warned his subjects that they would have to ‘bear the unbearable, tolerate the intolerable’. The greatest unbearable and intolerable fact would be an Allied occupation of Japan. The government had accepted the conditions laid down by the victorious Allies on 26 July 1945 in the Potsdam Declaration. Japan’s armed forces were to be disarmed and demobilised, Japan would lose its overseas empire, those held responsible for the war punished, and Japan was to be occupied by the Allied powers, who declared their intention to create ‘a new order of peace, security and justice’ based on democracy and personal freedoms. The occupation of Japan would end only when all of these objectives had been achieved and ‘there had been established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government’. For the first time in its recorded history, Japan would be ruled by outsiders.