70 years after the Potsdam Declaration
- By Heiko Khoo
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E-mail China.org.cn, July 26, 2015
When U.S. forces occupied Japan, General MacArthur was made the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. However, rather than purge the "authority and influence" of those who had launched Japan's wars of aggression, the trials of war criminals were limited in their reach, and they specifically excluded members of the imperial family.
Between 1945 and 1949 the U.S. military desperately tried to prop-up Chiang Kaishek's reactionary regime. Indeed, at one point, U.S. leaders even discussed dropping atomic bombs on Mao's forces to "save China" from communism. However, the inability of Chiang's regime to stabilize the economy, their corruption, and the barbaric treatment of their own troops, meant that U.S. efforts were useless. Chiang's army began to desert en-masse to the side of the PLA. And brilliant and sweeping military victories for the PLA paved the way for the Communist Party to take control of China's destiny in 1949.
That same year, the first Soviet atomic bomb was tested. This undermined the U.S. capacity to halt the advance of communist parties and states around the world. The Japanese Communist Party, which had opposed Japan's wars, was initially allowed to operate freely. It soon gained support, winning 10 percent of the vote in 1949. But in 1950 the party faced repression.
The united global struggle against the Nazis and Japanese militarists gave way to new conflict, the Cold War, as the U.S.-led capitalist world tried to contain China in the east and Korea became the first hot battleground.
Of course, 70 years on Japan's leaders should finally accept full responsibility for the barbaric aggression carried out by their country in the 1930s and 1940s. This also requires that the country's organization of power and the dominant way of thinking be transformed. China is not an enemy of the people of Japan that must be "contained" by the U.S.-Japanese alliance. Indeed, it was the United States that refused to purge the militarists and war criminals in post-war Japan. Japan is a country ruled by military-like structures of capitalist corporate power, which are linked to ghosts of a barbaric past. A people that know their past can build a future. It is time for the younger generations in Japan to wake-up to transform their country into a Japan that is truly ruled by the people.
Heiko Khoo is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://china.org.cn/opinion/heikokhoo.htm
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn
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