As the American effort to restructure a defeated Japan commenced, it seemed obvious to all that one of the first things to go was the Zaibatsu Family. Zaibatsu was the name given to the eight families which had held a monopoly on the manufacturing wealth and banking power in Japan since the mid-to-late Nineteenth Century. Made up of many names that you will recognize, this article goes into some detail explaining how the power structure worked and its relation with the Emperor. Standing before the judges who made up the 11-nation war crimes tribunal in occupied Tokyo, General Hideko Tojo, among 19 other Japanese wartime leaders, put on the show of his life:
"Without hesitation, Tojo accepted full blame for plunging Japan into war. But it was, he insisted, a 'defensive' war, and 'in no manner a violation of international law..'"
The article posted herein lists the aleged crimes of General Tomoyuki Yamishita (1885 - 1946) of the Imperial Japanese Army. The article also states the results of his sentencing, death by hanging. Two weeks after the trial he received a stay of execution by the United States Supreme Court. He was finally hanged on February 23, 1946.
During the Spring of 1946, the Japanese general behind the Bataan Death March was tried and executed, you can read about that here.
An eyewitness account of the devastation delivered to Tokyo as reported by the first Americans to enter that city following the Japanese surrender some weeks earlier: "Downtown Tokyo looks badly beaten. Along the Ginza, which is the Japanese Fifth Avenue, every other building is either burned to the ground or wrecked inside. A lot of the department stores and smart shops have English and French signs over their doors...Our official estimate of the bomb damage in Tokyo is 52 percent of the city." "The people of Tokyo are taking the arrival of the first few Americans with impeccable Japanese calm. Sometimes they turn and look at us twice, but they have shown no emotion toward us except a mild curiosity and occasional amusement...They are still proud and a little bit superior. They know they lost the war, but they are not apologizing for it." The Americans arriving in Japan after the surrender proceedings were hellbent on capturing the American traitor who presided over so many disheartening broadcasts -- the woman they nicknamed "Tokyo Rose":
"...one of the supreme objectives of American correspondents landing in Japan was Radio Tokyo. There they hoped to find someone to pass off as the one-and-only "Rose" and scoop their colleagues. When the information had been sifted a little, a girl named Iva Toguri (Iva Toguri D'Aquino: 1916 – 2006), emerged as the only candidate who came close to filling the bill. For three years she had played records, interspersed with snappy comments, beamed to Allied soldiers on the "Zero Hour"...Her own name for herself was "Orphan Ann."
Toguri's story was an interesting one that went on for many years and finally resulted in a 1977 pardon granted by one who had listened to many such broadcasts: President Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006), who had served in the Pacific on board the aircraft carrier "USS Monterey". An article touching on the war-weary appearance of Kyoto, Japan. Although the writer had been informed by the locals that Kyoto was very special to the Japanese, the dullard was really unable to see beyond the filth, rampant prostitution and general disrepair of the city in order to understand this.
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