I would never be the same again. On a beautiful August day in 1954, I was aboard the luxurious cruise ship of the American President lines enjoying amenities and services that I had never been accustomed to. I was soon to land in Yokohama Harbor only nine years after the end of World War II. When I walked off the gang plank, onto the docks, and among the crowded commercial bustle, I was shocked at what I was seeing, smelling, and hearing. For the next three years and ever since, I have pondered what it was that made things so different than what I had seen in Driggs Idaho, or Salt Lake, or San Francisco, or Honolulu.
As I got to know the people who were intelligent, good, and wonderful, and I heard what they had been through, it became gradually more obvious to me that what I was seeing on that first day was only the tip of the iceberg of what they had suffered prior to, and during the war. When I saw how fast they were improving their conditions, I began to visualize what it must have been like nine years previously while their cities were burning, and their families were starving and their clothing was less than a fraction of what we enjoyed at home. If the poverty I was seeing was staggering, what must it have been like during the war? To me, the small size and lack of comforts in their homes were unbelievable. What impressed me was that the people were admiring of, and respectful toward the occupying military. The people indicated that they had things much better under an occupying army than when their own government had been in power prior to, and during the war years.
Years later I talked to, and heard from some friends who were from some of the countries which had been invaded and occupied by the Japanese military. One told me of the times when the Japanese government forced the school children to go out to gather turpentine from the pine trees - to be used, as he thought, as part of the processing for aviation fuel. The people in all of the lands controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) were forced to labor as slaves to provide for military demands. The IJA invaded Taiwan, Korea, China, Manchuria, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Pearl Harbor. The oppression was not just upon Japanese people but upon all the countries they invaded. In Nanking, China alone, over three hundred thousand citizens were raped and slaughtered by the IJA. Some were buried alive. Over seven million Chinese lost their lives. The prisoner of war camps in Japan were notorious for the torture and high death rates - which on a percentage basis were seven times as high as the German prison camps.
The Japanese people themselves suffered greatly - so much that they were reduced to stealing from the supplies being shipped by the Red Cross for the prisoners of war. The citizens endured privations totally unacceptable to a free people. From Wikipedia we have the following: “By the end of the war, what remained of the Japanese Empire was wracked by shortages, inflation, and currency devaluation. Transport was nearly impossible, and industrial production in Japan’s shattered cities ground to a halt. The destruction wrought by the war eventually brought the Japanese economy to a virtual standstill.”
The suffering of the people during the bombing was described to me by one friend who had family in Hiroshima. My friend said that all of a sudden there was no communication with anyone in the whole area. Another told me of her anguish when she found her husband drowned in the city park moat where he had been trampled to death during a mass rush by the people to escape the burning city caused by the incendiary bombs being dropped. She then made her way up into the mountain nearby to deliver her baby under a pine tree.
In 1940 Japan, Germany, and Italy signed The Tripartite pact:
Article I. Japan recognizes and respects the leadership of Germany and Italy in the establishment of a new order in Europe.
Article 2. Germany and Italy recognize and respect the leadership of Japan in establishment of a new order in Greater East Asia.
Article 3. Japan, Germany, and Italy agree to cooperate in their efforts on aforesaid lines. They further undertake to assist one another with all political, economic and military means if one of the Contracting Powers is attacked by a Power at present not involved in the European War or in the Japanese-Chinese conflict.
It was clear that there was no satiation in the lusts for power of those in positions of authority. Over a period of years their lust for, and acquisition of power had gradually increased to a point that it was a major disaster - not only to their own people, but to all the nations. Following the overthrow of the out-of-control government in 1945, the Japanese again recovered their industriousness, and have had an extended prosperity. The cost of the overthrow has never been clearly or accurately determined in extent and gravity, but one thing was obvious - the people could not by themselves throw off an over-powerful-government.
