This dissertation examines the lives of Japanese disabled war veterans and the activism of the Japanese Disabled Veterans Association (JDVA: Nippon Shôigunjin kai) in the early postwar period, beginning immediately following the Allied Occupation in the summer of 1945 and ending in 1963, when the National Diet passed the "Act on Special Aid to the Wounded and Sick Retired Soldiers" (Senshôbyôsha Tokubetsu Engo-hô). Established in 1952, the JDVA would play a leading role in securing welfare for Japanese disabled war veterans.

Thesis--Bonn. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 286-310).

This study examines postwar Japanese photography and the influence of World War Two, the Allied Occupation (1945-1952), and social and economic transformations during the Era of High-Speed Growth (1955-1970) on ways in which photographers approached and depicted reality. In the late 1940s, censorship erased the reality of a devastated society and evidence of the Allied Occupation from photography magazines. Once censorship ended in 1949, photographers reacted to miserable living conditions, as well as the experience of producing wartime propaganda, by confronting reality directly. Finally, photographers responded to social transformations and resulting challenges during the Era of High-Speed Growth by shifting from an objective reporting to a subjective critique of reality. A study of photography from 1945 to 1970 not only demonstrates how socio-historical forces influence photography but also reveals key changes in Japanese society and the urban landscape as Japan transitioned from a defeated, occupied nation to an economic powerhouse.

The collapse of Nazi Germany was accompanied by a humanitarian disaster of staggering proportions. The newly-founded United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and its successor the International Refugee Organization (IRO) identified repairing the damage that the war had inflicted on Allied displaced populations as one of its foremost humanitarian obligations. These UN agencies cast themselves as pre-eminent agents of ‘rehabilitation’, facilitating a fast transition from war to peace through scientific methods of refugee management conducted along Rooseveltian lines. Departing from earlier relief efforts, their ambition was to provide more than a mere ‘soup kitchen’ charity, their aim being to ‘rehabilitate’ Displaced Persons (DPs). Their methods were, however, vigorously contested in the field by military and occupation authorities, by members of established voluntary societies, and by UNRRA/IRO’s own continental recruits. This thesis explores these confrontations through the lens of French DP administration. Although these UN agencies proclaimed a new era of internationalism, solutions to DP problems were often defined in nationalist terms. DPs were organised by ethnicity and strong ties attached relief workers to their own national groups. For French planners and humanitarian workers, the DP question was much more than a humanitarian problem, and was bound up with issues of domestic reconstruction, culture and identity as much as the provision of medical aid and relief. This thesis demonstrates that distinctive diplomatic constraints, economic requirements and cultural differences influenced the thought and practices of refugee humanitarianism, shaping alternate ways of arranging interim provision and ‘rehabilitating’ DPs in the French zone of occupation. Despite the fact that Allied responses to the DP problem mirrored divergent wartime experiences and differing national visions for the post-war future, this thesis argues that the history of UNRRA and the IRO in the French zone cannot be solely understood as a story of inter-Allied confrontation and clashes of political culture. Numerous transfers of expertise and the circulation of ideas and people between the zones belie such a view. New-Deal influenced methods penetrated the French zone and local UNRRA/IRO staff progressively embraced the organizations’ declared mission of ‘self-help’, albeit on terms that reflected their particular interpretation of DPs’ best interests. The real impact of UNRRA and the IRO lies in this grey area of subtle processes of imitation and re-interpretation.

The postwar Constitution of Japan is one of the foremost legacies of american occupation. The aim of this study is to describe the circumstances of its creation, to evaluate the roles and motivations of the parties and individuals concerned, and to answer the following question: To what extent was the constitution imposed on Japan and to what extent was its contents a compromise? The study tries to emphasize the role of interaction between the GHQ and the japanese government prior to the presentation of the draft to the Imperial Diet. The focus is put on the analysis of the events of March 4th and 5th, during which the american and the japanese visions of postwar Japan clashed most dramatically.

Historiography tends to seek patterns of inevitability, attempting to explain a decided course rather than incorporating other evident, though unfulfilled possibilities. In the case of historiography on the Allied Occupation of Japan, this is particularly obvious. Occupation scholarship appears absorbed by the overarching US presence in Japan during this period, reflects the dominant paradigm of the Cold War and when it does venture past the US remains focused on the US-Japan dichotomy. Australia also participated in the Occupation, also held a vision for a Pacific future and developed a relationship with Japan. Often the Australian perspective did not coincide with that of the US especially on the terrain of ideological and historical experiences and interpretations. The potential for conflict between the two nations’ approaches to post-surrender Japan is particularly evident in labour reform policy and issues of social and economic justice – the focus of this thesis. Australian policies towards labour reform under the Chifley Labor Government are examined in this thesis within the context of the Australian labour movement’s historical legacy, Orientalism and racial stereotypes, the Cold War, US hegemony, idealism and pragmatism and overall Australian policy towards Occupied Japan as a dual-paradigm structure. This thesis investigates attempts to turn labour reform polices and ideals into practice, via the diplomatic control machinery established for the Occupation namely the Allied Council for Japan and Far Eastern Commission and as articulated by Australian government representatives including Dr H.V. Evatt, William Macmahon Ball, Patrick Shaw and Sir Frederick Eggleston. The thesis contests the predominant simplistic harsh peace label given to Australian policy in the current literature. By examining Australian policy towards Occupied Japan from a micro perspective, what emerges is a more complex foreign policy mosaic to which the research in this thesis is a contribution / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Abstract The emergence of a cabinet and political parties that could be called democratic was one of the focal objectives for the Allied Occupation of Japan that lasted from 1945 until 1952. Cooperation with the local political actors was also necessitated by the model of indirect rule through domestic institutions that was adopted. The occupation authorities were actively seeking suitable political leadership to govern Japan and were ready to intervene in the development of Japan’s domestic politics for the sake of achieving their goals. Great efforts were, however, made not to distract the democratic façade that covered the undemocratic and non-transparent behind-the-scenes orders. It was important to make the selection of the new political leadership to appear as something that originated from the freely expressed will of the Japanese people. This dissertation offers the first narrative identifying and analyzing the characteristics of the occupation authorities’ policy concerning the Japanese conservatives at the beginning of the occupation. The study emphasizes the importance of understanding the planning period’s influence on the actual occupation policy and introduces a wartime discussion concerning the Japanese conservatives. The process of sorting out the most suitable Japanese leaders in 1942 –1947 can be divided into several phases. What was considered suitable varied during different times, but what was expected from the suitable Japanese leadership remained rather unchanged. The planners of the occupation looked for moderate conservatives: who were to be thanked for Japan’s prewar steps toward democracy; who were not to be blamed for the war; and who were to help in the reconstruction process. At the beginning of the occupation, the occupation authorities sought for cooperative conservative statesmen who would be ready to follow the wishes of the occupier and yet claim the reforms as their own initiatives. After the first postwar general election in April 1946 this rule had to be connected with the conservative parties. Finally, the occupation authorities began to search for suitable middle-of-the-road conservatives who could, together with the right-wing of the Socialist Party, to continue the previous cabinet’s work while ensuring the social stability and the success of reforms in the changing situation.

This investigation examines the origins and function of the Napolas, boarding schools for the Third Reich’s future elite, before 1945 and demonstrates how those connected to the schools rehabilitated their experiences as students and teachers in the early postwar period and in the years since reunification. Between 1933 and 1945, the Napolas recruited racially valuable children and prepared them for leadership roles in Nazi Germany’s Thousand-Year Reich. The schools’ emphasis upon racial purity and premilitary training caught the attention of Heinrich Himmler and the SS. The appointment of August Heißmeyer, a high-ranking SS official, to the position of Napola inspector in 1936 opened the door for closer relations between the two organizations. Although the Napolas remained formally under the auspices of the Reich Education Ministry for the entirety of the Nazi dictatorship, the schools were gradually absorbed into the SS’ sphere of influence after 1936. The Napolas ceased to exist with the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. Due to the Napolas’ past ties to the SS, one of seven organizations deemed criminal by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, former administrators, teachers, and pupils of the schools were caught in the crosshairs of the Allied denazification program. Legal changes in the U.S. Occupation Zone in March 1946 gave Napola apologists an opportunity to challenge Allied accusations regarding the Napolas’ past as Nazi sites of indoctrination. As a result, a collective defense of the Napolas began to emerge, growing in repute and complexity as the denazification process continued. By 1949, the Napolas’ “postwar legend,” an exonerative tale of the schools’ history during the Third Reich, had not only stalled prosecution indefinitely, but also successfully reintegrated alumni into West German society. The postwar myth that exonerated the schools survived challenges during the Bonn Republic more or less unscathed. The willingness of former Napola pupils to recast their experiences as Nazi elite students in a positive light indicates that the Napolas’ postwar legend has lost none of its persuasiveness in unified Germany. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This investigation examines the legacy of the Third Reich through the prism of education. After the collapse of the Nazi regime in 1945, the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and France divided Germany into four zones of occupation and introduced a wide-ranging program of denazification. Former administrators, teachers and pupils of the Napolas, boarding schools for the Third Reich’s future elite, were among those affected by the purge. The Napolas had enjoyed an intimate relationship to Heinrich Himmler’s SS between 1936 and 1945, due in large part to the schools’ emphasis on racial purity and premilitary training. Yet Napola apologists responded to postwar prosecution by denying the schools’ role in Nazi plans for European domination. Their constructed memories rehabilitated the Napolas’ postwar image and successfully reintegrated alumni into West German society. The Napolas’ “postwar legend” has since become the defining characteristic of Napola alumni associations’ collective identities.

The Austrian State Treaty, achieved after ten years of occupation of Austria by France, Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, is a frequently cited example of the triumph of painstaking diplomacy between the great powers, but it can more accurately be depicted as the result of unilateral actions by the negotiating countries, particularly the Soviet Union. Careful examination of the records of the negotiations as well as available policy documents of the participants reveals that the highly publicized negotiations gradually became a sophisticated charade for the benefit of European and domestic audiences, while the critical decisions were made elsewhere. Indeed, as Europe grew increasingly polarized very little actual bargaining occurred between East and West; the Austrian negotiations became merely a forum for unilateral action. Thus, in describing the search for Austrian independence, the thesis is not simply a reiteration of the three hundred and seventy-nine meetings of the Foreign Ministers and Foreign Ministers' Deputies for Austria. Rather, it is a uniquely encapsulated version of the course of the Gold War in the ten critical years following the Second World War. The purpose of the thesis is to study, through the prism of British and American documents, the behaviour of the four great powers in the struggle to determine the future of Austria. Examining allied behaviour towards this small but strategically important country, and understanding how the Austrians came to choose a third way between East and West, sheds light upon the great power arrangements in Europe which have persisted to this day.

This thesis explores the British Commonwealth experience of occupation in Japan from 1945-1952. It draws on official and private records from the four participating British Commonwealth countries ??? Australia, Britain, India and New Zealand- to examine the complex relationship that developed between the occupying troops and the occupied Japanese population in the period between the cessation of hostilities and the formal ratification of a Peace Treaty. The thesis begins with an analysis of the preconceptions British Commonwealth troops brought with them to Japan, to establish the context for their cross-cultural encounter with Japan and the Japanese people. An understanding of the historical background enables the impressions formed by BCOF troops during the occupation to be presented not as random observations, but as part of a tradition of contact and cultural critique. The British Commonwealth experience in Japan was shaped by a number of external factors. Delays in moving to Japan weakened media and public interest in the force, eroded morale and precipitated a ???foreign force??? mentality. Once in Japan, the dominant US presence, the subordinate status of BCOF and the shortcomings of the isolated, rural area allocated to the force were a source of disappointment and frustration. But the difficulties attending British Commonwealth involvement in the occupation should not obscure the simultaneous development of a significant cultural encounter. The circumstances of the occupation created a particular dynamic between BCOF troops and Japanese civilians. The responsibilities and obligations that SCAP conferred on the British Commonwealth force invested BCOF personnel with authority over the Japanese. The disparity in power was reinforced by participation in occupation tasks that confirmed their status as occupiers. The occupation relationship was heavily influenced by the nature of personal interactions established between BCOF personnel and the Japanese people. Service in Japan provided opportunities for troops to reassess their views of the Japanese in the light of personal experience. For some, the cultural differences they observed only reinforced their sense of the ???otherness??? of the Japanese. For many others, the occupation provided a bridge between war and peace, as contact with Japanese people eased the intense hatreds generated during the war. For most British Commonwealth personnel, service with BCOF impacted in some way on the beliefs they held about Japan and the Japanese.