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.