Rehabilitation of Japan

Rehabilitation after a war can be viewed in many different ways.  The traditional idea is of physical bodies being restored after damage from a war.  However, after the widespread destruction of World War II, many other aspects of society had to go through rehabilitation.  In David Serlin’s “Reconstructing the Hiroshima Maidens” and Dobbins, Poole, Long, and Runkle’s “Post-World War II Nation Building: Germany and Japan,” physical rehabilitation is discussed along with the rehabilitation of the state and the nation after the war.  This was especially difficult for Japan, a country which had been completely annihilated by the atomic bomb during their defeat.  Despite the differences in these articles, the overarching theme I found is that the United States had good intentions of helping, but their Americanized bias kept them from making sustainable or meaningful repairs in rehabilitating the Japanese nation. Whether they were trying to or not, they rehabilitated Japan to be more American.

Both of these articles are similar in how they focus on the American influence in the rehabilitation of the Japanese state after World War II.  However, because they focus on different aspects, they have different conclusions on the effectiveness of American intervention in the rehabilitation of Japan. Serin’s article focuses on more cultural and social aspects, while the other article is more focused on policy and economics.  These differences shape the type of evidence used in each article.

Serin’s article, which focuses on more cultural and social aspects, discusses the “Hiroshima Maidens,” a group of women who were badly disfigured by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and were brought to the United States for corrective plastic surgery.  The United States had good intentions of helping these women, however, a lack of cultural knowledge and sensitivity made many aspects of the journey very awkward and demeaning for these women. Although the plastic surgery was intended to improve the lives of these women, plastic surgery was seen as an inherently American medical practice that was reserved for the elite in many other countries.  Additionally, Americans were caught up in their stereotyped ideals of Japan that they made embarrassing mistakes for these young women.  An example is when the women were forced to wear traditional Japanese outfits, even though they regularly wore more westernized outfits, on a reality TV show. The following quote describes the insensitivity that went along with this occasion:

“It must have seemed necessary to extinguish actual details of Chyssa’s modern experience for the sake of transforming her and the Maidens into oriental spectacles…” (p. 90)

Thus, in terms of social and cultural rehabilitation after the war, the US ended up making a lot of the anti-US sentiments worse.

However, in Dobbins, Poole, Long, and Runkle’s article, which focuses purely on US policy in the Japanese occupation after the war, there is a more positive view on the affects the US had on Japanese rehabilitation.  After such a devastating war, the US helped rebuild an economy that was not only stable but thriving mere years later.  From a policy standpoint, this was a very successful rehabilitation. MacArthur, the general leading the rehabilitation,

“was moving so quickly that he got ahead of Washington at one point, announcing on September 17, 1945, that, since the Japanese government had been so helpful to the occupation, the U.S. military could reduce its presence from 500,000 to 200,000 troops in less than six months.” (p. 29)

However, this article’s evidence leaves some questions, because there is no perspective from the Japanese side.  Though the strict policy seems to have been successful, there is no information on how this affected the Japanese morale.  They had not suffered defeat before in such an all-encompassing way, and it must have been difficult for them to rebuild through such Americanized influence.  Both articles lack evidence on how this affected the Japanese identity, which had received several major blows throughout this process.

Despite the differences in the authors’ focuses in these articles, both highlight how the US imposed its influence and ideas in Japanese reconstruction, for better or for worse.  The connections that Serin made between the physical reconstruction of the Maidens and the rehabilitation of Japan as a whole challenged me to think about rehabilitation in a broader fashion, looking not at physical rehabilitation but the rehabilitation of a state after destruction from war. I find Serin’s view and evidence more convincing, because he looks at the tensions between the US trying to help Japan despite the historically devastating bomb they just dropped on the Japanese.  Looking at this tension is uncomfortable, but it gives the reader more insight into the difficulties of rehabilitation of all sorts after World War II.