Why was the occupation of Japan and post-war Japan such a success?

I recently read Embracing Defeat, a book about the occupation of Japan, and from what I can tell they still have a lot of respect for him.

Good book by the way

Apparently lots of flips still love him too.
How does he do it.

By sitting in his Throne room at SCAP headquarters and having a crew of madmen like the guy that delivered this nuke

>Italy is still shit post-War
Italy has just slightly less GDP per capita than Japan, and more wealth per adult than both, on top of having a non-suicidal birth rate.

That's just Northern Italy carrying the shithole that is Southern Italy.

Given that the whole still manages to keep pace with the masturr race and the sararyman, that would imply Northern Italy is significantly better than Germany and Japan.

>tfw MacArthur was a 20x better politician than general

It's amazing that MacArthur gets the recognition he does for the things that he sucked at.

It is. That's why /pol/ aryan supremacist orthocuck fedoras get assblasted about muh dark ages, muh papacy, muh renaissance.

>shithole that is Southern Italy.
What is bad about southern Italy?

It was the world power at one point in history.

(Citation needed)

Because all along their real enemy was the Soviets. Everything they did was to stop the spread of communism in Asia, gain access to strategic resources, and establish a buffer zone between Japan and the Soviet Union.

>Everything they did was to stop the spread of communism in Asia
Way to go attacking and destroying Nationalist China and colonial Southeast Asia and thus enabling communism to happen I guess.

Mistakes were made.

>Way to go attacking and destroying Nationalist China and colonial Southeast Asia
Nationalist China fucked up plenty themselves and colonial areas were excellent breeding grounds for communists because the conditions were so terrible any fuck with some charisma could rally people to their cause.

Also the fact that the Nationalists literally invited in Soviet agents for help, and then got mad when they started spreading communist propaganda among their soldiers.

Sure. Japan interrupted no civil war or anything in which ROC had all the advantages. Nope.

Also in my country, the Philippines, the BTFO of the Philippine Commonwealth and the defanged, subservient, puppet republic Japan created as a replacement led to the first communist uprising because both the nips and the puppet government were powerless to maintain law and order in a wartime situation.

Because they were given free money to spend on things to enrich Japan.

The army was not immediately disbanded upon victory, it maintained command structure through the occupation. In this way it was difficult for arms to disappear into a potential resistance.

The USA genuinely wanted a stable and prosperous Japan in East Asia.

But it's not like it was completely altruistic reasons. Japan got rich from being a floating base for US military units engaged in Korea and Vietnam, even before the economic miracle.

>Sure. Japan interrupted no civil war or anything in which ROC had all the advantages. Nope.
Things were bad before that point and even Chiang saw how the many problems with the ROC were bringing things down prompting comments like "organization becomes worse and worse... many staff members just sit at their desks and gaze into space, others read newspapers and still others sleep".

>led to the first communist uprising
The communist played their cards right in that situation. What is your point? You wanted the US to do more? Asia was pretty much on its own because it was halfway across the world.

The Philippine Commonwealth and the US Government pretty much ended the first communist party in the Philippines in the 30s. Made it illegal, forced them underground, and was on its way to a quiet death.

...until Japan came along.

Maybe you should stop making stupid suppositions that HURR JAPAN WAS OUT TO ELIMINATE DA COMMUNISTS when the whole narrative Japan constructed for its imperialist efforts was "oust whitey."

>Maybe you should stop making stupid suppositions
Maybe you should stop making stupid projections. How did you get "Japan was out to eliminate the communists? from that?

>Made it illegal, forced them underground, and was on its way to a quiet death
In one country.

Japan was looking at all of Asia. The Philippines just happened to be a valuable asset for future military actions.

During ww2 Japan looted over 100 billion dollars in terms of artifacts and resources from the nations it invaded which the USA secretly allowed them to keep. This money gave a huge jump start to the country after the war. Also that while the main zaibatsu were broken up all the constituent parts were still there, unharmed and not harassed by the US after the war, and no one important involved in industry was purged. The USA investment firms had invested a lot of money in Japan and they didn't want to see the returns on those investment fail, this combined with fear of communism resulted in a Japan that wasn't punished for what it did in ww2 but keep all the benefits (outside of conquered land) it had gained over the past 20 years.

By dominating the people while also helping them economically. These are both critical points: you must dominate, harshly at times, to ensure control and stability while you govern. People respect strength and safety even if they aren't politically aligned, especially at the end of a debilitating war. Injecting capital and industrial investments connects ruler to rules and shows your legitimate interest in the people's welfare.

Belittle the old regime and scapegoat them for the war. This isn't as important but does a lot to create connection. Humanize your governing body by making top key officials highly visible and attribute successes to them and failures to dissenters.

When the population asks for more political freedom, give it to them piece by piece so they are appeased but still controlled for some time. After a suitable amount of time, leave in a great flourish and celebration to make a lasting impression. Acknowledge the people for their hard work.

These are the things I learned from Embracing Defeat.

So?

Post-war leniency and an economic boom in exchange for letting the US station troops there sounds like a pretty good deal.

Follow the thread, doofus. >Because all along their real enemy was the Soviets. Everything they did was to stop the spread of communism in Asia, gain access to strategic resources, and establish a buffer zone between Japan and the Soviet Union.

Japan's "real enemy" was the other Imperial Powers. Communist, Capitalist, what have you. Its only until they were browbeaten that they went along with the US program.

McArthur was a total cuck at times.
He got pushed off a beach my one of his own men.

>t. hyun woo
when did japan sell artifacts roughly equivalent in value to its annual gdp at the time, someone must have noticed

Much of the Japanese government wanted to avoid conflict with America at all costs, even if it meant abandoning ambitions in south Asia.
Unfortunately the cabinet was increasingly filled with Army lackeys and the Diet eventually signed away their power to the army out of fear of western aggression.

FDR's policy decisions certainly didn't help ease tensions.

Well. Having hit women is useful

Japs otherwise faced total extinction. If they had held out, the country would have had been split between the Soviets in the north and the Americans in the south, with no survivors. Tokyo would be nuked entirely, as would every other major Jap city.

The surrender was the best bargain they ever made: 10 years of shame in exchange for (eventually) becoming a major economic competitor for the US, held into place by being the "front line" against communist China.

It don't matter, they're with the US against China. Again, it's why the deal they made was so smart as the US is sworn to defend Japan against their largest and closest enemy.

MacArthur wanted to walk to Beijing and totally genocide China due to their communist takeover. That's why asians love him,

...

Actually, they declined to join NATO, when merkel invited them, and are doing this precisely to be friendlier with Russia, in the vain hope that they can somehow get their "northern territories" back.

People did notice. The Japanese and American's noticed. It was not all used at once, much of it is still unused and some has been lost. Also remember that cultural artifacts don't need to be 'used' they can just sit in private collections or vaults. And when you steal gold and re-brand it with Japanese markings it becomes impossible to tell where it originally came from.

It was an official policy known as Golden Lilly overseen by the Emperors brother.

That's...pretty sadistic and cruel. And Americans take pride in this? Yikes.

>Soviets want to invade Hokkaido and divide Japan
>Oh wait, we have no navy worth mentioning in the Pacific, a mere 11 landing craft.
>Let's ask Truman for some ships to land in northern Japan with!
>I'm sure he'll say yes!

Ignore all these meme answers. The real reason it was a success was because the US literally paid for an enormous proportion of Japan's defense budget during the Cold War. Shigeru Yoshida, Japan's influential Prime Minister at the time, refused to place more in spending on Defense and used the US's Constitutional provisions against them.

So whilst the US spent billions trying to defend the Japanese Islands from falling to the Russians during the late 40's through to the 60's, the Japanese spent billions in developing their economy, educating the populace and rebuilding infrastructure.

This. Large-scale contested amphibious invasions are crazy difficult. There's a reason Normandy/D-Day is considered such a feat, and a reason Operation Sealion was considered so impossible (even with the Germans having more of a navy).

Indoctrination will do that. He disliked the Philippines because it was his political exile after he fucked up hard with handling the Bonus Army.

It's fucking poor and backwards.

>Yfw those statues were 1:1 replicas

Great book

MacArthur basically said the Emperor dindu nuffin wrong and absolved him of any responsibility for the Japanese military, thereby retaining the national dignity.

Hirohito even showed up to MacArthur's office wanting to offer a personal apology on behalf of Japan, but MacArthur refused to see him.

>kill 25 million KMT
>kill 300,000 Commies

>"hurdur we totally didn't help the Commies eventually win the civil war"

>Much of the Japanese government wanted to avoid conflict with America at all costs, even if it meant abandoning ambitions in south Asia.

(Citation needed)

>FDR raised tensions
WE DIDNU NUFFIN

>Hirohito even showed up to MacArthur's office wanting to offer a personal apology on behalf of Japan, but MacArthur refused to see him.
(Dubious source)

Failing make Hirohito face justice was the worst part about the occupation.

However you can't blame the occupation forces too much. Even though we can now see that getting rid of Hirohito would not have caused as much civil unrest as SCAP thought it was still a reasonable fear at the time. And keeping Hirohito probably did shorten the occupation.

Quite the opposite, Japan wanted the conflict as the Washington Treaty had restricted the amount of tonnage a Japanese Naval vessel was able to be; which was a huge blow to Japanese pride as the 'Asian hegemon'. Also the US oil embargo meant that Japan HAD to expand into the oil rich regions of South East Asia in order to fuel there aggression in China.

Barnhart, M. A. (1987). Japan prepares for Total War: The search for economic security 1919-1941. New York: Cornell University Press.

The Strike on Pearl Harbour was supposedly to knock out the US navy and scare them into submission. Yet, the Japs firstly didn't do a good enough job, and secondly completely misunderstood the mood in Washington. That being, they would jump at the opportunity to get involved in the Pacific (and European) theatres of war

There was definitely a lot of anti-American sentiment among the Japanese people, but the government absolutely were not warmongering, against America anyway.

> Also the US oil embargo meant that Japan HAD to expand into the oil rich regions of South East Asia
I was talking prior to the oil embargo. Of course after that there was really no path away from war.

>despite Russia being mad at ex-Nazis ant trying to steal their factories and scientists to bring back to the motherland

Boris Chertok says otherwise in his books, he stated that when German scientist were working on their own rocket project (GR-1 or R-3, don't remember exactly which one of those was German) in USSR along Russian teams, they were basically left out of job because of high secrecy, which lead to political and military personel go crazy in fear that they would steal some of the info or equipment for Germany or even US. So they gave those scientists basically a job of doing nothing but fill papers and a few months later sent them back to Germany where they were released with some amount of money to settle properly in recognition for helping reverse-engineering the V-2s to make R-1s.

Well even before that, the Japanese conquest of Manchuria and setting up of Manchukoku was still a resource grab.

>inb4 muh marxist arguement

It is kinda, however Japan actually predicted War with the US even before the Oil Embargo. (Citation is the book previous mentioned). The US manufactured much of the Heavy Machinery needed in Japanese Industry and Japan simply didn't have the local resources necessary to fuel an ever expanding Military. Due to the militarists in the Diet etc

Therefore, Machuria and subsequent expansion was in aim in order to economically secure Japan.

The book is really good by the way, look up the Quest for Autarky in Japan as well. (At least I think that is the name of the book)

I thought those were life size?

Manchuria alone or even north China was not going to provoke America to war. They knew that Indochina and any move into SEA would though.
Which is why as late as 1940 they were debating whether to go south at all, or just grab for Siberia instead.

>The book is really good by the way, look up the Quest for Autarky in Japan as well.
Will check them both out

*1941

I agree that Manchukoku wasn't enough to provoke the USA to war. Yet, it was that which prompted the Oil embargo, which effectively forced Japan to continue its expansion.

Anyway, it would never have been Russian Camchatka, not developed enough and there was tons more readily available resources that could be used in the military i.e. Rubber, oil etc in Indochina/ SEA.

On a side note, this is actually a fun discussion for once.
>inb4 bait/ shitposting

The oil embargo didn't start till they went into Indochina. The sanctions that were in place though did hurt.

They basically made the judgement that even if they didn't go south, it was still possible that America went to war, in which case they would be screwed without the resources. So really they had no option.

Makes you wonder what would have happened if Matsuoka didn't have such a big ego, and if FDR wasn't paranoid about the Japanese.

>Anyway, it would never have been Russian Camchatka,
They were looking at a lot more than Kamchatka. Basically as much as they could get before Hitler could completely defeat the Soviets, which they were told by the Germans, would not take long at all.

Even still. Not really any immediately useful resources up there.