THE KOREAN WAR
On June 25th, 1950, with the backing of China and the Soviet Union, North Korea invaded South Korea. Active hostilities ended in the Korean War on 27th July 1953. If you can call a conflict that led to between 4 and 5.5 million deaths something as flippant as “a draw”, then that’s what it was. The Two Koreas are still legally at war.
In the spring of 1951, the international community briefly hoped that the two sides might agree a ceasefire. President TRUMAN had even prepared a statement saying as much. But on March 23rd, General MACARTHUR beat him to the punch with his own, far more belligerent statement. And on the following day, he launched a serious attack on his North Korean enemies.
President Truman was enraged. MacArthur had exceeded his authority in various ways. He might even have prolonged the war, although contemporary documents don’t seem to have been concerned about that part. On April 11th, Truman fired him from his role as Supreme Commander in the Far East. MacArthur was having lunch at the US Embassy in Tokyo when the news came over the radio. Despite legally being on US soil, he didn’t get the official notice for another thirty minutes.
And that put someone different in charge of Japan. Truman replaced MacArthur with General Matthew RIDGEWAY. Ridgeway would remain as Supreme Commander until the Occupying forces ceased controlling Japan in 1952. Speaking of which:
DECLARE PEACE
April 28th 1952 saw the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco. While World War II had been over for years, this was the actual declaration of peace. 49 nations signed it, and it went into effect on September 8th. There were a number of nations who didn’t sign, though. Italy just weren’t invited. The United Nations hadn’t decided on a policy concerning China and Taiwan/Chinese Taipei.1 The two Koreas were too busy fighting each other. While the Soviet Union were in attendance, their delegation spent most of the negotiation period claiming that the treaty stacked the deck in the USA’s favour.
I feel there’s some historical validity to that position, as you’ll see shortly. There was an eventual treaty between the Soviets and Japan, although I’d hesitate to call it a “peace treaty” as such. They wouldn’t sign that until 1956, and it almost immediately became a point of argument. The two nations chose to interpret the treaty’s terms differently. The disagreement continues, even today, with the USSR’s successor state. There’s a chain of islands between Kamchatka – definitely Russian – and Hokkaido – definitely Japanese – which remain disputed between the two countries, specifically because the Soviets didn’t sign the Treaty of San Francisco. It would be funny if it wasn’t potentially so dangerous.
Part of the Treaty of San Francisco laid out a framework for compensatory payments to the nations Japan attacked, although having learned from the debacle that was the Treaty of Versailles, they didn’t have to pay a single yen until Japan had financially recovered to the point where they could afford them.
PREPARE FOR WAR
But in theory, Japan belonged to itself again. Well, apart from those Soviet-held islands to the north. And the islands of Ryukyu to the south, better known as the Prefecture of Okinawa, which were now a colossal staging post for the US Armed Forces. And the Liancourt Rocks in the Sea of Japan, which were South Korean now2. And then there were all the other military bases.
Because as part of the peace deal, American President Harry H. Truman imposed a second treaty on Japan, as a condition of arranging the first. It was the Security Treaty between the United States and Japan, which was signed on the same day as the San Francisco Treaty.
This second treaty allowed an additional 260 thousand American troops to remain in Japan. It established the ongoing military alliance between the two countries, but gave American forces the right to use Japan as a base for military action, without any obligation to defend their hosts in the event of an attack. And it had no fixed end date.
Truman Stacks The Deck
The treaty was horribly stacked in America’s favour. American historian John W. Dower puts it well in his paper3 on the US-Japan military relationship:
“…the treaty forced Japan to agree to conditions of inferiority unmatched in any of the other forty-plus security treaties negotiated between the United States and other nations in the 1950s.”
When the Japanese people learned of this second treaty, some of them literally rioted. After all, the Korean War was still raging, and no-one knew better than Japan that their American “guests” weren’t averse to nuking people. So a combination of Socialist trade unionists, student activists, Japanese-Koreans and Communists tried to protest on May 1st4 in front of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. But the government had closed it to protesters earlier in the year, and when the police showed up to clear the area, a fight broke out.
Two protesters were killed, another 1500 were injured, and about 800 police were hurt as well. A new law was passed to try and prevent similar protests in future, but it didn’t work. As I’ll outline when I get there, the rest of the Fifties would see huge protests against American bases across the country. Rightly or wrongly, the Japanese people blamed the Communist party for the way matters had unfolded, and in October 1952’s general election, they lost all thirty-five of their seats.
FIN
For once, this was all gleaned from Wikipedia, apart from a couple of additional sources I’ve referenced already. So now the history is out of the way, I can get back to the cartoons. Which weren’t, in this period, generally Japanese. I answer the question of what they were, next time.
- Which is all I have to say about that. ↩︎
- Which remain a point of contention, leading to diplomatic issues as recently as November 2025. ↩︎
- John Dower (1969) The Eye of the beholder: Background notes on the US-Japan military relationship, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 2:1, 15-31, DOI: 10.1080/14672715.1969.10405400, p. 24 ↩︎
- Always a significant date for the Left, of course. ↩︎
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