Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2017. xii, 225 pp. (Map, B&W photos.) US$45.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-5017-0308-9.
The photo that appears on the book’s cover aptly introduces one of Architects of Occupation’s main themes: Franklin D. Roosevelt looking away from the map to which Admiral William D. Leahy’s pointer directs his audience suggests the president’s tendency to “find analysis from outside official channels” rather than from the experts he appointed to do this job (29). Such expert analysis, however, would not go to waste as beginning in April 1945, Roosevelt’s “poorly trained” successor Harry S. Truman relied “heavily on [these same] advisers and existing recommendations” to complete the war and plan postwar occupations (143). Dayna L. Barnes suggests that differences between postwar German and Japanese Occupation in part stem from this power transition and the differences in approach that the two men brought to the job.
Barnes’ purpose eclipses the heavily trodden trail that examines how the White House transition from Roosevelt to Truman, after the former president’s death, influenced late-US wartime and postwar policies. Additionally, she considers the contributions of wartime planners, including academics, intellectuals, and unofficial officials who provided “information and theoretical frameworks and mental maps to help policymakers make sense of their options” (7). Such information was used less by Roosevelt, who relied on his intuition and advice from a tight circle of trusted advisers when making decisions. Indeed, he apparently trusted his undersecretary of state, Sumner Welles, more than his secretary of state, Cordell Hull.
Conflict separated many of the architects of occupation that Barnes introduces. One such conflict existed between the “China hands” and “Japan hands,” of which Roosevelt leaned toward the former. His “four policemen” proposal included China joining the US, UK, and USSR to patrol the world in search of belligerent fires to extinguish. Throughout much of the war China hands occupied positions of influence within the US government. In addition to the president such hands included Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Division Chief of the Foreign Relations section of the State Department Stanley Hornbeck, both of whom harboured strong anti-Japanese sentiment. Roosevelt was instrumental in gaining Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek’s participation in the important Cairo meeting, counter to the objections of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The president also kept Chiang informed of war developments through another China hand, Owen Lattimore (22). The punitive occupation that these advisers pushed found opposition among Japan hands, including former Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew and Foreign Service officers Joseph Ballantine and Eugene Dooman, both of whom had spent considerable time in Japan prior to the outbreak of war. One interesting view pushed by this camp was that the war in part was encouraged by “American anti-Japanese behaviour in the 1920s,” particularly US exclusion of Japanese in 1924 and its refusal to recognize Chinese treaty violations in 1928 (40). Whether this group’s influence strengthened with Grew’s ascension to the position of undersecretary of state (and often acting secretary of state) from 1944 is a question in need of further consideration.
Barnes also includes input from “unofficial officials,” members of think tanks such as the Council of Foreign Affairs, the media, and the United States Congress. Here, too, opinion skewed toward China, particularly among members of the media, as many prominent members had received their baptism into Asia through missionary work in China rather than in Japan. People like Pearl Buck, Henry Luce, and Owen Lattimore praised China’s “democratic-like society” but ignored the fact that Japan’s history as a functioning democracy dated back to 1925 when it instituted universal (male) suffrage (88). Thus, the media praise the US ally as “more placid, kindly, [and] open” while criticizing its enemy as “dogmatic [and] arrogant” (89). This opinion was predictably shared by a Congressional opinion that was checked, and thus influenced, by that of their constituents. American opinion challenged congressional views on the internment of US-based Japanese as well as views on the fate of the Japanese emperor and the postwar roles of Japan and China. China gained support from the February 1943 visit to the United States by Madame Chiang Kai-shek. However, Barnes adds, towards the end of the war congressional thinking shifted from “support for an idealized [China] nation to more cautious assessment of a collapsing ally” (131).
Discussion on Japan centred in part on the territory that a postwar Japan should be allowed to maintain, and the role the Allied forces should play in assuming control over the territories stripped from the defeated Asian enemy. Congress, mindful of the terms etched into the Atlantic Charter that preached self-determination and warned against postwar land annexation, opposed any attempt by the US to assume control over Japanese-occupied territories. Winning post-World War II peace would require the United States to be more active in a post-World War II United Nations than was planned (133). Through the Ball-Burton Hatch-Hill (B2H2) initiative, Congress sought to educate the American public on the mistakes the US made in the wake of the previous world war, particularly the decision not to join the League of Nations. Such internationalists laced their arguments over war responsibility in an unconventional way—at least considering the wartime circumstance; rather than a product of Japanese aggression, World War II resulted from an “anarchic international system.” A strong international institution with strong US participation was required to tame this system (138).
Architects of Occupation skilfully weaves diverse voices into a complex narrative that instructs on the wartime planning for Japan’s postwar occupation. Barnes’ interesting discussions, however, occasionally left this reader wanting more in-depth coverage. For example, the rich discussion on the degree to which these ideas survived the war and were to be implemented in Japan (“The Best Laid Plans”) deserves treatment as a lengthy chapter rather than as an abbreviated conclusion. The book does, however, pave a solid foundation that untangles the complicated decision-making processes that attempted to read the postwar future while chaotic battles enflamed a world at war.
Mark E. Caprio
Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan