ABSTRACT
The San Francisco System takes its name from two treaties Treaty of Peace and bilateral Security Treaty signed in San Francisco on September 8, 1951, under which the terms for restoring independence to Japan were established. The Soviet Union attended the peace conference but refused to sign the treaty on several grounds, including the exclusion of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Washington's transparent plans to integrate Japan militarily into its Cold War policies. The fifth territorial dispute left unresolved at the 1951 peace conference involves the sparsely populated Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. Eight problematic legacies of San Fransico system deserves particular attention: Okinawa and the 'two Japans'; unresolved territorial issues; US bases in Japan; rearmament; the 'nuclear umbrella'; 'history issues'; containment of China and Japan's deflection from 'Asia and subordinate independence'. The conservative Yoshida government that negotiated Japan's acceptance of the San Francisco System faced a fundamentally simple choice in 1951.
