• ksynwa_from_lemmygrad [he/him, des/pair]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    “Japan lost the war to the Americans,” he explains

    They lost it to China and the Soviet Union. But maybe losing the inter-imperialist rivalry hit them different.

    • charly4994 [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      The US specifically wanted to avoid the Soviets from entering the Pacific Front because they didn't want them having any possible claims to Japan and potentially having to split the land akin to Europe. Pretty quickly after the US occupation there was a sizable communist movement seeking to gain power through election where they expected the US to hold up their public statements of freedom and democracy. In the end though the US cracked down on the leadership and essentially destroyed the movement. Though pretty pathetic now, the Japanese communist party still receives a decent chunk of the vote, though obviously nothing to actually disrupt the neoliberal hell.

      • Dolores [love/loves]
        ·
        1 year ago

        the US specifically asked the soviet union to enter the war in the pacific at the Yalta Conference

      • CrushKillDestroySwag
        ·
        1 year ago

        You missed the part where the JCP tried to start a Protracted People's War on Stalin's orders, but the completely war-weary Japanese population totally rejected them and they ended up just giving the occupiers an excuse to crack down on themselves. Basically every leftist in Japan was considered a terrorist by the average person until the 80s when enough time had passed that they could rebrand as pacifists, but by that point the political machine of the Liberal Democrats had become all-encompassing.

    • Dolores [love/loves]
      ·
      1 year ago

      i think destroying the fleet of an island nation and blockading it was pretty major when japans armies were overseas