ABSTRACT
In August 1946, John Davies, the First Secretary of the US Embassy in the Soviet Union, claimed, “Current Soviet policy toward Japan is designed to disrupt to the greatest possible degree the development of a healthy Japan oriented toward the United States.” He argued, “It is worse than idle, it is a delusion, to assume that Japan can be reconstructed as a neutral, self-sufficient nation, enjoying friendly relations with both the United States and Soviet Union. The American and Soviet frontiers meet in the Japan Sea.”1 John Emmerson, the Assistant Chief of the Division of Japanese Affairs, foresaw that Japan’s future course would be “one of two political alternatives: domination by the United States or capture by the Soviet Union.”2 The hawkish War Department regarded Japan as “the battleground on which is being fought the war of capitalistic democracy against Communism.” Since the United States was “committed to wage this war to a successful conclusion,” its failure would “forever admit her loss of prestige in the East.”3 The CIA argued that “Japan’s defeat in World War II has created a vacuum of power in the Far East where the extension of Soviet influence and US strategic interests have been brought into direct conflict.”4 Joseph Dodge considered Japan as an “important border area in the world-wide clash between Communism and Democracy.”5
