Japan in War and Peace, 1943-48

Selected Documents from a Translator's In-tray In the period 1946-48, as a member of the British Occupation Force in Japan, which formed part of the Allied Occupation following the Asia-Pacific War of 1941-45, the author collected a number of documents which throw light on the attitudes of the Japanese people in the latter part of the war and the equally critical first two years of the peace.

After the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, never has a nation been forced to switch so abruptly from the extreme views of resistance early in 1945 to the need for accommodation with the occupying United States armies.

These rare documents, therefore, largely produced in facsimile, which include a miscellaneous assortment of personal documents, propaganda materials, military memorabilia and teching aids, cover a wide spectrum of Japanese thinking.

Since the writers of many of the extracts quoted are drawn from the lower rungs of society they provide an insight into the attitude of citizens who are often neglected in accounts of the Allied Occupation - thereby providing scholars, researchers and those with a general interest in Occupation history with a valuable new dimension to our understanding of this period and its impact on the Japanese nation.

Prefacing the documents and drawing on the memory of his own `Occupation days' in Kure, southern Japan, is the author's analysis of what actually took place, the role of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) and the issues that had to be addressed, opening with `War: Civilian Reflections' and concluding with `Peace: The Grassroots of Occupation', followed by a summary of his own perspectives on the Japanese experience of occupation.

The volume concludes with W.G. Beasley's `Personal Reminiscences at Yokosuka and Tokyo' in the period September 1945-March 1946. This valuable document was dictated to his wife in the last months of life.

Ian Nish is Professor Emeritus of International History, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and honorary senior research associate of the Suntory Toyota International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD). He has published extensively - from his widely acclaimed early works on the Anglo-Japanese Alliance to the eight-volume collection of important historical works and documents he compiled and edited, entitled The Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5 (Global Oriental, 2004). Most recently, he compiled and edited Japanese Envoys in Britain, 1862-1964: A Century of Diplomatic Exchange (Global Oriental, 2007).