A Tale of Two Countries

Let us count the ways in which the world has changed since World War II…

Actually, let's not. There are just too many.

Taking that on would be like vowing to eat everything on the table at Thanksgiving dinner in one sitting: there are too many different kinds of dishes going on, and there's altogether too much to digest (and really, everyone knows stuffing is better the day after Thanksgiving, anyway).

Instead, let's focus our considerable energy on discussing how the Pacific War part of World War II changed its two biggest players: Japan and the United States.

Now there's a hunk of history and insight we can really sink our teeth into.

The New BFG on the Scene

It's always really cool to discover a new hidden talent. And for the United States, World War II revealed a hidden talent it really hadn't ever considered before: being the most powerful nation in the world.

And what a game-changer that discovery was.

Before the war, even though the U.S. had been involved in a couple international skirmishes, its attitude as a whole was rather live-and-let-live-ish.

"You do you," isolationist America would say, referring people to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 and the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s if they had any questions.

But once Pearl Harbor was attacked, those mittens of neutrality came off, and big ol' red, white, and blue boxing gloves took their place.

The number of active U.S. military personnel swelled from a couple hundred thousand to well over sixteen million, just in the years between 1939 and 1945.

And after 1945, though the threats from the Nazis and from Japanese imperialism had been eliminated, a new one rose up to take its place: communism.

Before the United States and the Allies could even slap a decent high-five over their World War II victory, the Cold War had begun, and this conflict would keep America and its military hopping all over the world for the next 45 years.

And in 2001, the United States was attacked again, and again found itself involved in war outside its own borders.

American non-interventionism was a thing of the past.

But today, there is evidence that Americans are starting to feel those isolationist urges kicking in once again. Though the U.S. still has military installations in more than seventy countries around the world, in 2014 it had less than 1.4 million active duty personnel, with another 800,000 in reserve units.

Why is this happening?

For one, let's give a brief shout-out to all of the social and civil changes that have happened in the U.S. since World War II. And we're not just talking about the popularity of cage-free eggs and 50 Shades of Gray, here. We're talking civil rights, economic booms, and the advent of cable television. We're talking globalization and the internet.

Big, big changes.

We can see firsthand the goings-on around the world, and for some, that access has translated into a desire to get back to living-and-let-living. "That's not our fight," people say, looking at events happening on the other side of the world.

For two, it costs money to be all International Military Might and stuff. Wars, conflicts, even peacekeeping missions—they can get expensive. And some Americans would rather those dollars were spent remedying domestic ills—or that they weren't spent at all.

For three, war itself has changed. While nations still go to war with one another (and unfortunately probably always will), it has become more common for individual groups to wage war, like we've seen with terrorist attacks in recent years. Cyberterrorism has also become a thing, and the big airships and other weapons of wars past are just less useful in today's conflict environment.

What would the United States look like today if Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbor? We may never know the answer to that question, but we feel pretty confident saying this: it would still be different now from what it was in 1940.

And you can take that to the bank.

Extreme Makeover: Empire Edition

One of the conditions of Japan's World War II surrender was that it would be taking on a roommate.

And not the low-key kind of roommate who spends like 24/7 in their room playing Fallout 4 and eating Totino's Pizza Rolls, but the kind who takes over the monthly budget, puts up chore charts, and throws out anything in the house that might be considered unhealthy or unstylish.

In other words, the Allied entourage, led by Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces (that's SCAP for short) Douglas MacArthur, was moving in.

See, Japan's behavior before and during the war had made a lot of folks around the globe pretty nervous. The country's uber-zealous militarism and its habit of trying to take land by force really rubbed some people the wrong way. So for months before Japan's government even officially surrendered, countries like the U.S., the U.S.S.R., the Republic of China, and Great Britain had been having several heart-to-hearts about how to prevent the Empire from carrying on like it had been once the war was over.

They had come up with a lively document known as the Potsdam Declaration, and it goes a little something like this (allow us to paraphrase):

New Rules for Japan:

• No more of this censorship, state religion, state media, or human rights violations nonsense that's been going on around these parts. 
• No more of this wacky militaristic world conquest stuff; we'll determine which land belongs to Japan and which doesn't. (Teaser: China's getting some land back.)
• In fact, let's go ahead and disarm the country's entire military now.
• Double in fact, we're gonna keep an eye on the economy and make sure it recovers enough to feed people and stuff, but not enough to re-arm those soldiers.
• To that end, we're going to put some people in place to make sure Japan does everything it's supposed to do. "Occupation" seems like a good word for it.
• War criminals: we'll talk after class about the consequences of your actions.
• P.S. Do as we say, Japan, or we'll completely and utterly destroy you.

Three guesses as to how that went over the first time Japan peeped it.

Actually, then-Premier Suzuki responded with one word: mokusatsu.

"Um, no," said the Allies, whose interpreters informed them that mokusatsu meant that the Japanese intended to completely ignore the declaration.

Of course, after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan decided that maybe the Potsdam Declaration wasn't so bad after all, so they signed it, and the Allied occupation began.

Tokyo Overhaul

But what did this mean, other than the fact that Douglas MacArthur now had office space with a great view of the Emperor's palace?

Well, in the first few years of the occupation, from 1945 to 1948, Japan's entire army was dismantled, and all of those now-retired military peeps were banned from holding political office in the newly-forming Japanese government. Also, war crimes trials were held in Tokyo, which resulted in hundreds of executions and thousands of life sentences. Land and business reforms were also enacted, and a new Allies-approved constitution was introduced in 1947. This constitution reduced the Emperor of Japan to a figurehead with no real political power and it set the stage for the country to become a democracy.

It was a busy few years.

After that, the focus shifted to making sure the new Japanese economy was strong enough to stand on its own two feet (and thus avoid falling victim to the growing popularity of scary, scary communism).

Then in 1950, when MacArthur and the Allies felt like Japan was economically stable and wasn't in danger of returning to its old conquest-y ways, formalizing a peace treaty became the order of the day.

In September of 1951, the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed by forty-eight nations (including Japan). It set the terms for peace between Japan and the Allies, it allowed Japan to remain a sovereign nation, and it also allowed the U.S. to have military installations within Japan's borders (just in case).

And it worked.

To this day, the economic, social, and political reforms instituted in Japan after the war are largely still in place, though there might be some changes on the horizon.

The relationship between the U.S. and Japan is also still relatively solid, though, just like in any relationship, they have some disagreements and sore spots.

And maybe most importantly, there's been peace. Not everywhere, and not between everyone, but no more world wars have broken out, and Japan and the other San Francisco Treaty signing members have all abided by the terms of their agreement.

And we think those are pretty big accomplishments indeed.