Would Japan have become like Iraq after the execution of Saddam Hussein?
And could Japan have recovered from the war damage and built itself up to an economic powerhouse like in the 1980s (the 1980s of our timeline)?
1) In what way?
2) No. And that was a tribute to MacArthur's genius leadership. He transformed that country because he understood their culture and stepped into the void of their Emperor as a benevolent dictator. You saw the devastation. As you mentioned, in just a few short decades they went from that to an economic powerhouse who the U.S. feared in the 1980's.
1) In what way?
No. Not everyone behaves like that. Japanese have honor unlike terrorist who kill innocent people thinking they're going to paradise afterwords.
shareDon't know about the Japanese having honor in World War II (Rape of Nanking? Bataan Death March? Pearl Harbor?). And please explain the kamikazes.
shareThe kamikazes were used during military attacks on military installations. You're right about that other stuff though.
shareIn the case of kamikazes I was thinking more about people killing themselves and others through suicide on the "promise" of going to some form of heaven because of it. You could argue that suicide bombers think they are only killing their enemies, but the reality is so far from that, it becomes absurd to even try and justify the logic. I concede that point.
share. Japanese have honor unlike terrorist who kill innocent people
During the war they acted far worse. They make Al Quada and the Taliban look like saints by comparison.
share'No. Not everyone behaves like that. Japanese have honor unlike terrorist who kill innocent people thinking they're going to paradise afterwords.'
Thats why British POWs were brutalised and almost starved to death because of Japanese honour!
Its that man again!!
1) Hmm......Japan in 1945 was not Iraq in 2003. Japan at that time (and this is still mostly true today) was a homogenous society whereas Iraq is home to three major religious and ethnic groups - the Muslim Sunnis and Shia's in the South and Middle regions and the Kurdish people in the North. The modern nation-state of Iraq is largely in fact a creation of the Treaty of Versailles, in which the region (at that time known as "Mesopotamia") was handed over from the Ottoman Empire to the British by the League of Nations.
That being said, there most likely would have been considerable civil unrest throughout Japan if Emperor Hirohito had been deposed, tried, and/or executed. Although playing a "ceremonial" role as head-of-state, Emperor Hirohito was treated like a living deity by his people. Removing that symbol of power would have probably thrown post-War Japan into some form of anarchy, in which political groups ranging from left-wing communists to surviving right-wing nationalists and militarists would have been fighting among themselves and with the American Occupation Forces. And anyone familiar with Japanese history will be familiar with the nearly 200 year period between 1400 and 1600 when Japan was pretty much in a perpetual state of civil war - although even during this period, rival warlords or daimyo sought political legitimacy from the Emperor).
2) If Japan had been thrown into political chaos, then most likely not, or at least not without billions of dollars of U.S. aid and decades of American military occupation. And as we are learning (once again), the American people are not willing to make such sacrifices in order to rebuild another nation (and especially when the United States in general could also use some "nation-building" or rebuilding).
That being said, thousands of American military personnel are still stationed in Japan as part of a longstanding security agreement and the controversial "Article IX" provision in Japan's Constitution (which was drawn up by General MacArthur's staff). This has benefited not only Japan but also Pacific Islands like Hawaii and Guam that have benefited significantly from Japanese tourism and economic investment.
Perhaps a better question to ask is if Japan would have become economically powerful if (North) Korea and China had remained pro-U.S. (or even neutral) rather than becoming allies of the Soviet Union during the "Cold War"?
I just saw Emperor and enjoyed the historical perspective. I thought I would reply to this post.
First, I don't know if anyone knows what would have happened in Japan if the Emperor had been deposed or executed. Based on recent history, the Americans knew that Germany fell into anarchy, socialism and then fascism after WWI. They understood that the Emperor was a strong cohesion point for the Japanese national identity. They knew retaining the Emperor made the job of rebuilding Japan easier. My opinion is that Japan probably would have been more tumultuous, but based on the Japanese spirit I don't think their is any conclusive evidence that they would have fell into anarchy or open insurrection. Of course, the Emperor ordered them to lay down their arms and that order could have been viewed as null and void to the Japanese. But again, the Germans after WWII laid down their arms.
Second, in response to the comment that the U.S. public is not supportive of nation-building. I think the costly and misdirected experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan have tired the American public of such large endeavors. As you pointed out Olihist, Iraq is really not a nation to begin with. Afghanistan is most certainly not either.
If you look around, you can see shining examples of countries that have benefitted from some U.S. support after WWII. Germany, Japan, Italy, South Korea, Taiwan and so on. Of course, the fear of communism was a major motivation for the U.S. I always wondered how much support The Philippines received and why this country never developed extensively as other Asian nations.
To Sambuca62, I am positively amazed at the lucid, cogent replies on this thread. This movie Emperor must have struck a nerve with history and political professors rather than the many rabid and phony 'patriots' who see only shades of black and white -- us good, them evil.
I've also wondered why Filipinos got short shrift in the peace, many of the guerilla fighters who helped USA and boot the Japanese were ignored when they presented wartime written credentials. Perhaps it's because the Philippines was not an industrialized power BEFORE the unpleasantness and as Joseph Heller hints in Catch 22, the industrial powers moved quickly into Germany as well as Japan to rebuild and become profitable. It seems Magsaysay held the Communists at bay and no American assistance was needed there, unlike Japan and Germany. I'm guessing the P.I. was not the homogenous defeated blank slate, too fragmented, too many competing politicians for the 'RIGHT' people to step and make a bundle. But that's just gut feelings, no smoking guns.
I miss Big Band music and talented singers. Leonard Cohen is my idol. Civility, harmony, unity!
[deleted]
You got it right.
Executing the Emperor would have unraveled Japanese society and, in the chaos which followed, communism would have infected the islands.
General MacArthur had the good sense to hold the nation together in order to promote reconstruction with certain social modifications such as trade unions, suffrage, women's rights.
I guess we can conclude this was successful nation building. We got it right in Germany, as well.
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The US planned all along to use Hirohito in the postwar occupation. Note that General Lemay was not allowed to bomb the Imperial Palace when the U.S. incinerated Tokyo in March of 1945. It was the only part of central Tokyo that was not bombed.
It was a very intelligent strategy. As Machiavelli noted in the Prince, a wise ruler gives the people the illusion that they are governing themselves. MacArthur made the big decisions, and then let Hirohito pass them on to the Japanese people to make it seem like they came from the Emperor.
As for the morality of giving Hirohito a pass while hanging Tojo, we gave a lot of Japanese war criminals a pass. Check out what Unit 731 did under the express orders of Hirohito. It's unbelievably sadistic. Just a few of the experiments conducted on men, women, children and infants include: civilians being deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death; vivisection where both arms of the prisoner were amputated and then sown back onto the body left-arm-to-right-shoulder and right-arm-to-left-shoulder; prisoners placed into high-pressure chambers until death; prisoners experimented upon to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival; placed into centrifuges and spun until death; injected with animal blood; exposed to lethal doses of x-rays; subjected to various chemical weapons inside gas chambers; injected with sea water to determine if it could be a substitute for saline solution; and burned or buried alive. Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions. Flame throwers were tested on humans. Humans were tied to stakes and used as targets to test germ-releasing bombs, chemical weapons, and explosive bombs.
Instead of being tried for war crimes, the researchers involved in Unit 731 were given immunity in exchange for their data on human experimentation. Again, instead of hanging these sadistic Japanese war criminals as we did the Nazi doctors at Nuremberg, we gave them immunity in exchange for information. Hard to believe, but that is what happened upon MacArthur's express orders.
If you're looking for justice, you won't find it here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
Let us suppose that the United States is at war with England, an island nation nominally ruled by a royal sovereign who is head of the officially recognized religion, The Church of England. Let us further suppose that the British are much more deeply religious than they actually are. That is, let us suppose that they do not hold the King or Queen as just the head of the Church, but to be the living descendant of Jesus. I don't want to be sacrilegious, but you need to understand things the way the Japanese see them, more particularly the Japanese of 1940 through 1946. I use England in order to remove the concept from Asia and put it in Europe. Our culture is descended from England and you might be able to understand it better that way.
Now, following the war we arrest, try, and hand the British King (pretend its King George VI). What would happen in Britain?
The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.
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Non-sequitur, your facts are uncoordinated.
From WW II until recently (I think the 1970's) the Japanese government maintained a claim on the Spratly Islands. They based their claim on having established a submarine base, a seaplane base, or both (I forget which) there during WW II. They dropped their claim in the 1970's or 1980's because it was specious and unenforceable. Up to now countries have not attempted to push for claims on seas. I have heard that the Chinese are leaning in the direction of actually claiming the South China Sea, but I find it difficult to believe that they expect such a claim to be accepted. They will find it as the Japanese finally recognized for their claim on the Spratly Islands, specious and unenforceable. In fact, they may find that it forces the arguments over claims of the Spratly Islands into the Hague. The Hague may well find that the Chinese have no reasonable claim on the islands and the United States may relish the idea of enforcing the Hague's decision (even though we ignore them when it suits us). I am sure that the PRC will think it through and move cautiously. They always play the long game.
However, none of that seems to have much to do with whether Emperor Hirohito should have been tried. Since he has been dead for a couple of decades, it is a moot point.
The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.
The thing is Japan and Germany were both utterly and completely defeated in WW2. The liberals in the US government have not allowed for such a complete victory ever since, and it was disgusting to hear the liberal media hacks on CNN ask Ben Carson if he could order an airstrike against Islamic terrorists where there could be some collateral damage. I think that even if another country attacked the US with nuclear weapons, Obama, Hillary and Sanders won't retaliate with a nuke. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible events but they were necessary.
The true way to defeat Radical Islam would be to lay waste to Iraq and Syria and demonstrate that their Allah will not help them, destroy their air of invincibility. Then those countries can rebuild with radical Islam discredited. The same with Palestine, the Israelis should completely and utterly level Gaza and the West Bank and deal Hamas the kind of defeat that Japan suffered.
Also nothing that there are some notable similarities between the imperial Japanese culture of WW2 and the Islamic culture today, most notably their willingness to die and use suicide attacks. However, with the crushing defeat that Japan was dealt, it discredited their philosophy, and we showed that despite the banzai charges and kamikaze pilots, we still prevailed over them.
Japan is a fundamentally changed culture today. No Japanese person would be willing to fly a kamikaze mission, while there are hundreds of radical Islamic suicide bombings every year right now. We won WW2 against the Axis because our government was not filled with bleeding heart liberal cowards like Obama, Hillary, Reid, Sanders, and Pelosi. We also had the power to annihilate North Vietnam during the Vietnam War and depose the communist regime but didn't. We should have taken advantage of the moment during Desert Storm and killed Saddam Hussein in 1991 while his army was on the run and we were slaughtering them from the air. Liberal traitors in the US government and media actually pressured Bush to end the war when he did because Iraqi soldiers were being slaughtered too badly.
The reason Gaza heats up every couple years is because Israel has never been allowed to deal a crushing blow of Hamas, including killing their entire leadership and raining down bombs and missiles on Hamas controlled neighborhoods and leveling every known terrorist hideout in the Palestinian territories. Then there may be peace with the Palestinians suing for peace. The liberals mindset only prolongs conflicts. Like imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, radical Islamists only understand force. Any kind of sympathy for them is a sign of weakness.
This is what needs to be done to ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The US, UK, and Israel should utterly level Iraq, Syria, and Gaza.