Beginning on December 8, 1945, the American occupation authorities supplied special allocations of newsprint to Japan’s major newspapers and instructed them to publish a series entitled “History of the Pacific War.”
Drawing on an essay by Sukehiro Hirakawa, this article examines how the Allied historical narrative, emphasizing Japanese military atrocities, became entrenched in Japanese academia, journalism, and education through occupation policy, censorship, and acceptance by both conservatives and the political left.

June 22, 2020
The Establishment of the Allied Historical Narrative in Japan.
Beginning on December 8, 1945, the American occupation forces even made special allocations of newsprint to Japan’s major national newspapers and had them publish a series entitled “History of the Pacific War.”
It was, of course, part of the occupation policy.
The following is a continuation of the preceding chapter.
The Establishment of the Allied Historical Narrative in Japan
Beginning on December 8, 1945, the American occupation forces even made special allocations of newsprint to Japan’s major national newspapers and had them publish a series entitled “History of the Pacific War.”
It was, of course, part of the occupation policy.
The series was prepared by the Civil Information and Education Section of General MacArthur’s headquarters and reviewed by military historians in the headquarters’ Third Staff Section.
Like the radio program “Now It Can Be Told,” it was presented as an account of historical facts that had not been disclosed to the Japanese people during the war.
It emphasized atrocities committed by the Japanese military.
It was, in other words, a historical narrative that portrayed Japan as the villain.
Jun Eto pointed out its importance in the following terms:
“The so-called ‘History of the Pacific War’ exerted an influence almost as profound as the censorship imposed by the CCD, the Civil Censorship Detachment of the General Headquarters of the Allied Powers, in the sense that it not only defined the paradigm of historical writing in postwar Japan, but also restricted and closed off the linguistic space within which historical writing could take place.”
Note 8
Was the war Japan fought in the Second World War nothing more than the “Pacific War”?
Did it contain no aspect whatsoever of the “Greater East Asia War”?
The Allied view imposed after the war, according to which it was the “Pacific War,” became established in Japan partly because ordinary Japanese people remained receptive to that view even after Japan regained its independence in 1951.
Within Japan, even among conservatives who believed that the country had no choice but to entrust its security to the United States, there were people who approved of the American interpretation.
Among left-wing people sympathetic to the people’s democracies of the Soviet Union, China, and other countries, there were far more who accepted the view later commonly called the Tokyo Trial view of history.
When a considerable number of people within Japan agreed with such a historical interpretation presented by the occupation authorities, it was only natural that it should become firmly rooted in Japan.
Once a view of history becomes established, it is extremely difficult to change.
The historical interpretation implanted in academia, journalism, and education through the cooperation of forces inside and outside Japan during the occupation soon came to possess academic legitimacy.
It may be compared to the way in which a modern Japanese historical narrative praising the achievements of the leaders of the Meiji Restoration became established during the Meiji and Taisho eras, when the Satsuma and Choshu forces held power.
Even if someone later advanced a revisionist argument that the Tokugawa shogunate, which advocated opening the country and maintaining friendly relations, had actually been more correct than the Satsuma and Choshu forces, which advocated reverence for the Emperor and the expulsion of foreigners, the counterarguments of the side once branded as the rebel army could no longer be readily accepted.
The same was probably true here.
To be continued.