Fighting on all Fronts (56 page)
Read Fighting on all Fronts Online
Authors: Donny Gluckstein
Meanwhile MacArthur’s Labor Division encouraged campaigns against the left in the unions, culminating in a “red purge” on the outbreak of the Korean War.
80
They were ably assisted by the Intelligence branch headed by General Charles Willoughby, who had praised Italy’s fascist dictator Mussolini in 1939 for re-establishing the traditional military supremacy of the white race and who would later work for Spain’s fascist dictator General Franco.
81
In this way the best chance to really democratise Japan was lost. Thomas Bisson, who worked for the occupation authorities, wrote in his diary: “The one really significant challenge to the old guard Japanese establishment has been turned back”.
82
1
J Dower,
Japan in War and Peace
(New Press, New York, 1993), p135.
2
E O Reischauer,
Japan: The Story of a Nation
, 4th edition (McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New York, 1990), p145.
3
M Hane,
Japan: A Short History
(Oneworld Publications, Boston, 2000), p155.
4
H Borton,
Japan’s Modern Century: From Perry to 1970
(Ronald Press, New York, 1970), p382.
5
M Hoffman, “Japan’s future may be stunted by its past”,
The Japan Times
, 15 March 2014, available at
www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/03/15/national/media-national/japans-future-may-be-stunted-by-its-past/#.VTvk4WRViko
.
6
Cited in T O’Lincoln,
Australia’s Pacific War: Challenging a National Myth
(Interventions, Melbourne, 2011), p102.
7
Ohara Institute for Social Research
Nihon Rōdō Nenkan
(Annual Report on Japanese Labour), Ohara Shaka Mondai Kenkyūjō, Tokyo 1938), p132; S Ienaga,
Japan’s Last War: World War II and the Japanese, 1931-4
(Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1979), pp209,221-222; S Tsurumi,
An Intellectual History of Wartime Japan 1931-45
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1986); Y Nishinarita,
Kindai Nihon Rōshi Kankeishi no Kenkyū
(Research on the History of Japan’s Modern Labour Management Relations), (Tokyo University Press, Tokyo, 1988), p232; D Schauwecker, “Verbal subversion and satire in Japan, 1937-45”, as documented by the Special High Police, Japan Review, 15; 127-151, 2003, pp143; M Hane,
Peasants, Rebels, Women and Outcastes: The Underside of Modern Japan
, 2nd edition (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, New York, 2003), p244; O’Lincoln, 2011, pp82-83.
8
P Edwards, “An honourable war”, in Peace, WWII 60th Anniversary Series,
The Australian
, 2005, p6.
9
K Marx and F Engels,
The Communist Manifesto
,
www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm
).
10
Cited in Hane, 2000, p163.
11
Y Hibino, 1929, p51, cited in O’Lincoln, 2011, p3.
12
O’Lincoln, 2011, p20.
13
A Gordon,
Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan
(University of California Press, Berkeley, 1991), p245.
14
J Utley,
Going to War with Japan, 1937-1941
(University of Tennessee Press, Knoxfield, 1985), p32.
15
C Harman,
Explaining the Crisis
(Bookmarks, London, 1984), pp11-12.
16
Ienaga, 1979, p133.
17
Cited in O’Lincoln, 2011, p16.
18
Cited in O’Lincoln, 2011, p16.
19
Hane, 2000, p159.
20
Hane, 2003, p73.
21
Ienaga, 1979, p17.
22
F C Jones,
Japan’s New Order in Asia: Its Rise and Fall 1937-45
(Oxford University Press, London, 1954), p5.
23
D Ide, “The prewar Japanese left: A survey and critique”, The Hampton Institute, available at
www.hamptoninstitution.org/japaneseleft.html#.U8xjS5SSxXF
, accessed 21 July 2014.
24
Hane, 2003, pp162, 244.
25
Gordon, 1991, p265.
26
Ienaga, 1979, p11.
27
Gordon, 1991, pp 277, 288.
28
Gordon, 1991, pp 13, 270-271, 277, 288.
29
Gordon 1991, pp 270-271, 277, 288.
30
Gordon, 1991, p290.
31
Gordon, 1991, p291.
32
Ienaga, 1979, pp13-14; J Moore, J Livingstone and F Oldfather (eds),
The Japan Reader
, vo1, 1,
Imperial Japan 1800-1945
(Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1974), p301.
33
S Shioda,
Nihon Shakai Undō Shi
(History of Japan’s Social Movements) (Iwanami Zenshō, Tokyo, 1982), p132.
34
Schauwecker, 2003, p143.
35
Shioda, 1982, pp131-132.
36
Dower, 1993, pp103, 143.
37
Ienaga, 1979, pp221-222.
38
A Fujihara (ed),
Nihon Minshu no Rekishi 8: Danatsu no Arashi no naka de
(The History of the Japanese People vol 8: Amidst the Storm of Repression) (Sanseido, Tokyo, 1975), pp306, 293-294.
39
Nishinarita, 1988, p232; Ohara Shakai Mondai Kenkyūjō
Taiheiyō Sensōka no Rōdō Undō
(The Labour Movement during the Pacific War) (Rōdō Junpōsha, Tokyo, 1965), p14.
40
Shioda, 1982, pp119, 121, 122.
41
Gordon, 1991 p302; Ohara Shakai Mondai Kenkyūjō, 1935, p217; 1938, p132; 1965, p14; Shioda, 1982, p126.
42
Ohara Shakai Mondai Kenkyūjō,
Shakai Rōdō Dai Jiten (The Encyclopedia of Social Labour)
(Ohara Shakai Mondai Kenkyūjō, Tokyo, 2011), p1057.
43
Fujihara, 1975, p134.
44
Nishinarita, 1988, p412.
45
Dower, 1993, p 115.
46
The Japan Times
, 30 June 2014
47
J Moore,
Japanese Workers and the Struggle for Power, 1945-47
(The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1983), pp10-12.
48
Ohara Shakai Mondai Kenkyūjō, 1965, p18.
49
A Fujihara,
Nihon Minshu no Rekishi 9: Senso to Minshu
(The History of the Japanese People, vol 9: War and the People) (Tokyo: Sanseido, 1975b), p210; G Totten,
The Social Democratic Movement in Prewar Japan
(Yale University Press, New Haven, 1966), p206.
50
Fujihara, 1975b, p181.
51
Cited in Ohara Shakai Mondai Kenkyūjō, 1965, p13.
52
Cited in Ohara Shakai Mondai Kenkyūjō, 1965, p13.
53
Ohara Shakai Mondai Kenkyūjō 1965, p13; Fujihara 1975b, p81.
54
T Sugiura,
Senjichū insatsu rōdōsha no tatakai no kiroku
(
A Record of the Struggle of Printers during the War
) (Kōyō Publishing, Tokyo, 1964) (was not printed for sale), pp106-108.
55
Dower, 1993, p117.
56
Fujihara,1975b, p177; Ohara Shakai Mondai Kenkyūjō, 1965, p19.
57
Ohara Shakai Mondai Kenkyūjō, 1965, pp15-20.
58
Ohara Shakai Mondai Kenkyūjō, 1965, pp21, 25, 26.
59
Fujihara 1975b, pp208-210, 293-294.
60
R Smethurst,
Agricultural Development and Tenancy Disputes in Japan 1870-1940
(Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1986), p354; Totten, 1966, p206.
61
Fujihara, 1975, pp304-306.
62
H Cook and T Cook,
Japan at War: An Oral History
(The New Press, New York, 1992), p129.
63
Tsurumi, 1986, pp82-83; for more on
kamikaze
see O’Lincoln, 2011, pp82-83.
64
Ienaga, 1979, p218; Fujihara, 1975b, pp163-4, 168; Shioda, 1982, p143.
65
D Greenlees, “Occupation Put Indonesia on the Path to Independence”,
New York Times
, 15 August 2005; E Hayashi,
Mereka Yang Terlupakan: Rahmat Shigeru Ono: Bekas Tentara Jepang yang Memihak Republik
(Ombak, Yogyakarta, 2012).
66
Hayashi or see
surabaya-metropolis.com/serba-kota/gerbangkertasusila/tentara-jepangbela-indonesia-tak-pernah-tercatat-sejarah.html
. Indonesian language website.
67
T Hasegawa, “The Atomic Bombs and the Soviet Invasion: What Drove Japan’s Decision to Surrender?”,
Japan Focus
, 2007, available at
www.japanfocus.org/-Tsuyoshi-Hasegawa/2501
, accessed 18 July 2014.
68
Dower, 1999, p119; see also W Carty,
Flickers From History: A Newsreel Cameraman’s Story
(HarperCollins, Sydney, 1999), pp155-156; J Dower,
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of WWII
(W W Norton and Co, New York, 1999), pp11-119; M Harries & S Harries,
Sheathing the Sword: The Demilitarisation of Japan
(Hamish Hamilton, London, 1987), pp72.
69
K Taira, “Economic development, labour markets and industrial relations in Japan”, in P Duus (ed),
The Cambridge History of Japan
, vol 6, (Cambridge University Press, New York, 1988).
70
Dower, 1999, p466; Harries & Harries, 1987, pp143, 149.
71
Dower, 1999 pp59, 466.
72
R Harvey,
The Undefeated: The Rise, Fall and Rise of Greater Japan
(Macmillan, London, 1994), p301; Dower 1999, pp525-526.
73
R Buckley,
Japan Today
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998), p21.
74
W McMahon Ball,
Japan: Enemy or Ally
(Cassell, Melbourne 1948), p19.
75
K Nimura, “Post Second World War Labour Relations in Japan”, in Jim Hagan and Andrew Wells (eds),
Industrial Relations in Australia and Japan
(Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1994), p67.
76
Nimura, 1994, p69.
77
Taira, 1988, pp648, 652.
78
Moore, 1983, pp52, 178.
79
Taira, 1988, pp648, 652.
80
H Fukui, “Postwar Politics 1945-73”, in P Duus (ed),
The Cambridge History of Japan
, vol 6 (Cambridge University Press, New York, 1988), p76.
81
Harries & Harries, 1987, pp xxviii, 222.
82
R Finn,
Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida and Postwar Japan
(University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992), p141.
The Huk rebellion and the Philippine radical tradition: ‘A people’s war without a people’s victory’
Ben Hillier
The Huk rebellion was the most important guerrilla insurgency in Philippine history and one of the most effective resistance operations of the Second World War.
1
Comprising up to 12,000 people under arms with a similar number in reserve, the People’s Anti-Japanese Army represented 5 to 10 percent of the total guerrilla forces across the archipelago.
2
Its fighters were drawn primarily from the central provinces of Luzon, the largest and most populous island. Huk commander in chief Luis Taruc later wrote:
The resistance movement that sprang up in central Luzon was unique among all the groups that fought back, in one way or another, against the Japanese. The decisive element of difference lay in the strong peasant unions and organisations of the people that existed there before the war. It gave the movement a mass base, and made the armed forces indistinguishable from the people.
3
As the Japanese were swept from the island in late 1944, often by Huk rebels ahead of the advancing US Army, there was relief at the prospect of peace. But soon Huk were being arrested, imprisoned and murdered under US occupation. The example they had set by placing areas under democratic government rattled both foreign occupiers and domestic elite. Returning landlords, who often had been collaborators with the Japanese high command, now sought to exact tribute from the heroes of the conflict. “The war against Japan was a people’s war without a people’s victory”, wrote Taruc.
4
The guerrilla units were soon reactivated as the People’s Liberation Army, drawn from a base of some 50,000 part-time soldiers and half a million sympathisers for whom the question of national liberation was not easily disentangled from class oppression.
A history steeped in rebellion
When Miguel Lopez de Legazpi established a Spanish beachhead in Asia at Manila Bay in 1565, the archipelago was inhabited by fewer than a million people. Social structures were based on a kinship system, the barangay, with a simple class structure.
5
There were no great cities and no central power; the economy was subsistence. The Spanish brought with them an embryo of the society from which they had departed. But the colonists were few in number and concentrated in Manila—the galleon trade with China was the obvious path to wealth. Tribute and forced labour were the conquerors’ rewards for securing the territory for King Philip ii. Those were enabled by royal land grants to administrators and Catholic religious orders. Jeffry Ocay explains:
The absence of a centralised government in this society made it extremely difficult for the Spanish colonialists to establish their colonial power and to collect tributes and exact services from the native people. In order to address this problem, the Spaniards systematically reorganised the pre-Hispanic Philippine society…into larger communities called pueblos…[which] became the most effective tool of domination used by the Spaniards during this time because it brought the native people together within close scrutiny and direction of the Spanish colonial officials and friars.
6
The island provinces by and large were “pacified” by the priests. By one estimate there were more than 1,500 priests throughout the country—more than the Spanish lay population—by the early 18th century.
7
Not until the 19th century was a European garrison stationed in the area.
8
“The fact that the people became Catholics made God the powerful ally of their rulers”, explained the radical left nationalist historian Renato Constantino.
9