Published on August 29, 2020. This essay examines what the original text describes as communication control implemented under the WGIP, including GHQ restrictions on newspapers, radio, and film, the Press Code, publication rules, censorship categories, restrictions on reporting unfavorable to the occupation authorities, and the confiscation and disposal of books. It asks how occupation-era information controls affected postwar Japanese historical consciousness and public discourse.

August 29, 2020
The following is a continuation of the preceding chapter.
■ Brainwashing through Communication Control
Because the WGIP’s communication-control measures were carried out in complete secrecy, the Japanese people were entirely unaware that they were being brainwashed.
GHQ first compelled newspapers throughout the country to serialize History of the Pacific War, which emphasized atrocities committed by the Japanese military.
Newspaper companies that cooperated were given special allocations of newsprint pulp.
A radio program titled This Is the Truth—later renamed The Truth Box—was also launched.
Films dealing with such traditional Japanese values as “loyalty” and “revenge” were all prohibited from being shown.
In this way, the Japanese people, amid shock and anger, came to believe these accounts completely as fact, eventually arriving at the idea of “national repentance by all one hundred million people.”
■ Prohibiting “Freedom of Speech and Expression”
WGIP Directive No. 3 was institutionalized as the “Japanese Publication Law” and was first implemented in the form of the Press Code.
A Radio Code and a Film Code were likewise implemented.
At the beginning of the “Japanese Publication Law” appeared the following wording: “The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers hereby promulgates the Japanese Publication Law ‘in order to establish freedom of speech in Japan.’ This Publication Law is not intended to restrict speech. Rather, its purpose is to foster among Japanese publications a sense of responsibility for, and understanding of, the meaning of freedom of speech.”
It reads like a black joke.
The censorship guidelines extended to thirty categories, all of them highly suggestive in revealing the intentions of the WGIP.
Because of these restrictions, incidents of rape and sexual assault against women by occupation-force personnel, which occurred frequently after the war, were not reported at all.
In addition, as many as 7,769 books, including studies of Western colonial rule before and during the war, were confiscated from government offices, libraries, bookstores, and other institutions and destroyed.
It was nothing other than a modern-day book burning.
Needless to say, this too was never reported.
These restrictions officially ceased to have effect when the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into force in 1952, but they have continued to be reproduced and expanded among the Japanese people themselves down to the present day.
3: Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers Instruction No. 33 (SCAPIN).
4: The thirty categories subject to censorship: subjects on which all criticism was prohibited included the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers or General Headquarters; the International Military Tribunal for the Far East; the fact that GHQ drafted the Constitution of Japan; the Soviet Union; Britain; Koreans; China; other Allied nations and the Allied powers in general; the United States; the treatment of Japanese people in Manchuria; prewar Allied policies; and the occupation forces.
Subjects whose very mention was prohibited included the censorship system itself, a Third World War, the Cold War, and improper references to GHQ or local military-government offices.
Next, subjects for which propagandistic advocacy was prohibited included the defense of war, the idea of Japan as a divine nation, militarism, nationalism, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and related matters.
Further subjects on which commentary was prohibited included the justification or defense of war criminals, relations between occupation soldiers and Japanese women, conditions in the black market, exaggeration of starvation, incitement of violence or unrest, false reporting, and publication of information that had not been officially released.
To be continued.