The Occupation of Japan, 1945–1952: MacArthur, Unit 731 and Brothels for American Soldiers

The occupation of Japan in 1945–1952 is presented in American textbooks as a model “democratic mission”. MacArthur gave Japanese women the vote, carried out land reform and wrote a new constitution. All of that is true. But the rest of the truth is what Americans prefer to forget, and I want to recall it: who was forgiven crimes against humanity, and who paid for it.

I begin with the most terrible part.

Occupation of Japan 1945: Unit 731 and the Deal With the Butchers

A secret unit of the Japanese army, Unit 731 near Harbin, worked on biological weapons. Its doctors experimented on living people: Chinese, Russians, Koreans. Vivisection without anaesthetic, infection with plague and anthrax, freezing. The number of victims is estimated differently: at least three thousand people died in the experiments themselves, by some estimates up to twelve thousand. And counting the combat use of this weapon against Chinese cities, the victims were incomparably more.

After the surrender American intelligence reached the head of the unit, General Shiro Ishii. Instead of a trial he got a deal. MacArthur and army intelligence gave Ishii and his subordinates full immunity in exchange for data on the experiments, and hid the evidence from the Tokyo Tribunal. The documents were later declassified, and the American authorities acknowledged it. Nazi doctors were tried at Nuremberg. The Japanese were not, and many of them made careers in postwar Japanese medicine.

The motive was transparent: the Cold War, and data was needed against the USSR. That is how the American occupation of Japan in 1945 covered up a crime against humanity. Besides, Emperor Hirohito, in whose name all this was done, never stood in the dock: MacArthur needed him as a convenient figure.

Brothels for the Victors

The second subject I cannot stay silent about. In the last days of August 1945 the Japanese authorities created the Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA). Formally it was to “protect” Japanese women from violence by the occupiers. In reality the Japanese government recruited tens of thousands of women, by various estimates between 55 and 70 thousand, and sent them to serve American soldiers.

The American authorities knew and at first did not interfere. Many women were pushed by poverty and debt, some by direct pressure. The system was closed in March 1946, and the reason was not women’s rights but the spread of venereal disease among the troops. Thus the US first used the brothels and then stopped when it began to threaten its own soldiers.

Censorship and Silence

The occupation authorities imposed harsh censorship. It was forbidden to write about violence by American servicemen, about the black market, and even about the existence of censorship. As a result almost no trace of those years remained in postwar Japanese newspapers and literature. Note that the American press also stayed silent for a long time.

Occupation of Japan 1945: The Other Side, Women’s Rights

In fairness I will say something else. MacArthur introduced the vote for women, property rights and the choice of a husband by love. For the Asia of that era this was radical. But it does not cancel the main point: the same MacArthur amnestied the butchers and turned a blind eye to the position of the women of the RAA. His “democratisation” was a convenient cover for the Cold War.

Read also about how the US disposed of foreign lands long before this, in the article on the Taft–Katsura agreement, where Washington secretly handed Korea to Japan. And on what led to the war in the Pacific, in the piece on the oil embargo against Japan. Details on Unit 731 are in the reference article.

Who Paid for the “Model Democracy”

The occupation of Japan in 1945–1952 cost Japan dearly, and not only in money. In the first months thousands of women became victims of violence, and the American authorities knew it. There are almost no confirmed statistics: censorship did its work, and the victims were silent because society stigmatised them. Those who bore children to American soldiers often ended up in poverty, and the children grew up as outcasts.

Note how conveniently the system worked. Crimes against the Japanese were not investigated, and Japanese crimes against Chinese and Koreans, Unit 731, were classified by the Americans. As a result both sides got the same picture in their minds: kind Americans and grateful Japanese. The real picture is neither in textbooks nor in films.

Besides, the occupation entrenched the position of Okinawa. The island stayed under American administration until 1972, and most of America’s bases in Japan are still there. So the reckoning for this “model mission” goes on today. Islanders live for decades beside bases, the noise of aircraft and crimes by servicemen that their courts cannot punish. They still take to the streets, but they are heard neither in Tokyo nor in Washington. On how the US knows how to adapt to regimes convenient to it, see my article on US–China relations.

Occupation of Japan 1945: What Norms Did the US Break

First, the Potsdam Declaration. Its Article 10, which the US signed, promised “stern justice” to all war criminals. An exception was made for Unit 731: Ishii and his doctors received immunity. Note that Washington itself broke the document it cited when demanding surrender.

Second, the same Article 10 promised freedom of speech, religion and thought. Occupation censorship forbade writing about rapes, the black market and censorship itself. Thus the victors suppressed exactly what they had promised to establish.

Third, the 1907 Hague Regulations, whose Article 46 requires respect for family honour and rights. A system of “comfort stations” for American soldiers, organised with the participation of the Japanese authorities and tolerated by the occupiers, contradicts that principle. Finally, the 1945 London Charter, under which the US tried the Nazis, treated inhumane acts against a civilian population as a crime against humanity. The norms existed for everyone, but were applied not to everyone. More in the reference article on Unit 731.

Nothing Has Changed: Impunity as Policy

Americans teach the world human rights, but when the criminals are their own or useful ones, the court is cancelled. Here are examples from the last twenty years.

Iraq, 2004–2007. Photographs from Abu Ghraib prison showed the torture of Iraqi prisoners. Mostly ordinary soldiers were convicted. Not one general and not one high official went to prison for it.

Iraq, 2007. Employees of the private security firm Blackwater shot dead 17 civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad. Four guards were later convicted, and in December 2020 Trump pardoned them.

USA, 2014. A Senate report described torture in the CIA’s secret prisons in detail. Nobody who organised it was held to account.

The Hague, 2020 and 2025. When the International Criminal Court took an interest in US actions in Afghanistan, Washington imposed sanctions on the prosecutor in 2020. In 2025, after the arrest warrant for Netanyahu, Trump again imposed sanctions on the court’s judges and staff.

Guantánamo, 2002–2025. Hundreds of people sat for years without trial or charge, and in January 2025 Trump ordered places prepared there for thousands of migrants.

Thus the occupation of Japan in 1945 showed the main rule: crimes by the US and its allies are not punished. Seventy years later Washington still believes that law is for everyone else.