An unidentified
British officer observed in late 1945 that “all the blood spilt in Java since
the Japanese occupation will never be known.” But some of the worst was still
to come. When the Japanese formally laid down their arms in mid-August 1945,
the entire continent of Asia immediately became shrouded in a thick fog of
peace, its new geopolitics distinguished more by confusion, mixed signals and
lost opportunities than by wise diplomacy. And as new alliances took shape
around old enmities, chaos, mayhem and anarchy engulfed the region. A
generation of new wars followed. The questions at the time were many. Who would
be liberated? Dutch and French colonials from the Japanese, or Indonesians and
Vietnamese from the Dutch and the French? Would Korea find its own role? Would
the Soviets control Manchuria? Under whose flag would China unite? Everything
was up for grabs.
Friends and foes
became hard to distinguish. Before they could be repatriated, some idealistic
Japanese soldiers - and not a few who feared indictment for war crimes -
deserted the Imperial Army and stayed behind to battle for Indonesian
independence. Others fought alongside the Vietminh against the French and the British
in Vietnam, while those still wearing the Imperial chrysanthemum stood guard -
fully armed and with bayonets fixed - when United States forces landed at
Inchon to begin the occupation of Korea. Many of Chiang Kai-shek’s generals,
having attended the Japanese military academy, used Japanese troops to fight
the Communists. The Japanese patrolled rail lines and broke a Communist-led
strike in Shanghai and that as late as November 1946, 80,000 or more Japanese
troops were operating under Chiang’s command.
Often the victors
were simply clueless, trying to govern with limited intelligence as they groped
around in the dark. Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru once mocked the United
States occupation in Japan for “its generally happy ignorance of the amount of
requisite knowledge it lacked.” And Japan was the country American officials
knew best! Despite the services of a very competent O.S.S. (the forerunner of
the C.I.A.), the United States was remarkably ignorant of the region. Armed
only with “a few pages on Korea” from a 1905 travel guidebook, for example, and
with no knowledge of the language, American occupation forces hired former
Japanese occupiers and suspected Korean collaborators to explain life on the
peninsula to them. A confused United States proconsul in Seoul declared to a
stunned Korean populace that the Japanese would continue to govern the country.
It took months to undo the damage. In fact contemporary Asia is a region
where the tectonic plates of geopolitics have never stopped shifting, one that
continues to feel the impact of decisions made in 1945 and roads not taken.
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