Nice,although i haven't purchased the Kindle one tbh so i'll wait for part 2 for more complete reading.
Decisive Darkness: What if Japan hadn't surrendered in 1945?
- Thread starter The Red
- Start date
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- after 1900 japan world war ii
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Nice,although i haven't purchased the Kindle one tbh so i'll wait for part 2 for more complete reading.
I hadn't realized the divergence was so strong! I've been holding off buying the books until this was all done up, but now of course I'll move that up my buying list...
Liberation
The end of the war did not have an immediate impact on the people of Hokkaido, the island had been under Soviet occupation for the best part of a year by the end of the Sapporo conference and whilst the American, Commonwealth and French forces worked to establish governance in their respective occupation zones for the Soviets it was largely a matter of an administrative rubber stamp on infrastructure and organisations which already existed, at least in terms of bureaucracy.
A great deal of emphasis was put upon the war’s end nonetheless, the Japanese troops who had fled into the mountains of Hokkaido after the original Soviet invasion had continued their insurgency whilst the regime they fought for collapsed to their south. With the war over in the rest of Japan, attempts were being made in earnest to ensure that in the face of their lost cause they would finally come down from the mountains. Despite a harsh winter and the Soviet willingness to forcefully evacuate entire communities suspected of being sympathetic, burning anything that might be of use, the former subjects continued to make much of the volcanic geography hazardous for the Soviets and their allies. It was hoped that Prince Nobuhito might provide an escape clause for those still fighting for the retention of the old imperial system, as surely it would be hypocritical to ignore the regent they were fighting for?
The internal logic of a dead system provided little solace, yet the Soviets still looked towards the Japanese to enlighten their own brethren. The Japanese People’s Emancipation League, now the largest group of armed Japanese in the world, were increasingly tasked with undertaking the work of liquidating what was left of the imperialist guerrillas. Though they had been created as a guerrilla force to aid the Chinese communists they took to their new counter-insurgency role with a revolutionary zeal, with advisors from the NKVD, Soviet state security, outfitting them both with intelligence skills second to none and the extreme paranoia of the Stalinist state. There were enemies everywhere, not just in Hokkaido’s mountains but in the island’s towns and cities with anyone who didn’t seem particularly enamoured with the new Japanese-Soviet partnership being suspect, alongside those who seemed to be too happy. Despite the official rhetoric of how the Japanese proletariat had been the victims of imperialism as much as anyone else living under the Emperor’s rule it seemed like no-one could be certain that they themselves weren’t aligned to the class enemy if they weren’t in the JPEL.
A climate of fear had begun to reign across the island, though the Soviets had officially thrown the imperialists off the island at the end of 1945, the continued references to the “counter-revolutionary bandits” in the hills and endless questions about the past for anyone who’d had a modicum of status in imperial society continued to raise awkward questions that were very rarely asked. Rural workers were no longer subject to harsh and exploitative landlords yet their control of the means of production was handed out in the form of ambitious collectivisation efforts spearheaded by Soviet agricultural experts, men who often had a rather exaggerated notion of what their “advisory” role meant. Urban workers who’d successfully rebuilt much of Hokkaido in the wake of the Soviet invasion enjoyed shorter working hours and better rations under the Soviets than they had under the imperial system yet they too were often afflicted with an unease that was similar to that of their rural comrades. The efforts to unionise the workforce had been greeted with enthusiasm yet the trade unions themselves seemed to be composed of cliques based around JPEL membership. Discussion was encouraged yet voices from outside the Emancipation League’s rather doctrinal party line were often subject to harsh criticism alongside more dangerous accusations.
The line itself had undergone some changes since Sanzo Nosaka had first created the organisation in 1944, initially aimed at Japanese soldiers turning against their imperial masters the league now focused on the Japanese people as a whole and with the war over it had to espouse both the revolutionary ideal of the Japanese proletariat alongside practical reconstruction of their crippled nation. This meant land reform and workers control on the one hand yet on the other it carried the burden of new targets and quotas, the Soviet model offered a bright socialist future on the basis of hard work and common endeavour, to abandon Japan’s imperialist past and build a new state amongst its ruins. It was a beautiful image yet as inevitable as Marx’s vision was it was a future that had to be built in the fires of the class struggle. If socialism was to spread across Japan then agricultural efforts would have to be focused on ensuring the American zone of occupation could stay afloat with minimum American effort whilst Hokkaido developed its light industry and ports until it became a model for the rest of Japan to embrace.
Though working hours had been notionally lowered the demands of Soviet estimates did not match the economy of the island, in doing so workers found themselves expected to do the work of twice as many men with workers that seemed to be more on the side of the administration than their own interests.
This was a bitter pill of swallow when the administration running Hokkaido remained a foreign occupation, even with it was a fraternal one. This was a nationalist discontent which the Soviets were not blind to as they continued to govern Japan via the Red Army. Whilst Nosaka and other Japanese communists had been pressing Soviet authorities for months to allow them to establish a socialist state their comrades had continued to stall. Unilaterally declaring a new Japanese government prior to the defeat of the imperial regime would have been impossible when the Soviet Union was still part of an international coalition that had pledged to defeat and rebuild Japan together.
In the wake of the final collapse of the remaining elements of the Imperial Japanese Army a declaration of a Soviet client state remained a risk. The Soviet Union continued to exert influence on the Allied Control Council to the consternation of the other powers, cutting Hokkaido off from the rest of the Japan would be the perfect excuse for the western powers to rally together and build their own capitalist nation without any Soviet contribution.
The Soviets weren’t wrong to be paranoid, yet the western betrayal came not in Japan but in the occupied areas of the imperialist’s former ally. Whilst by 1948 the situation in their zone of Japan had not adequately improved for the Americans to consider the feasibly of Japanese economic unification, let alone its desirability, this was not yet the case in Germany where after continuous bickering, relations amongst the Allied Control Council over Germany broke down. The Americans and the British began to combine the administration and economic policies of their German occupation zones whilst their Japanese administrations grew apart. Whilst the French stalled the Soviets reacted far more drastically.
By the beginning of 1949 the Workers and Peasants Democracy of Japan officially succeeded the Soviet occupation as sole authority over Hokkaido. The “Democracy” of the socialist state was immediately put into question when Nobuhito and Nosaka’s “Coalition of the Anti-Imperialist Democratic Forces” won every seat in the People’s Assembly when the young nation went to polls in the spring.
Despite the so-called “People’s Palace” where the Assembly would sit still being under construction in Sapporo, there was one policy that could not wait to be passed in the new worker’s state.
Until the American occupation of Japan ceased, the Provisional Japanese Authority could no longer rely on any food coming across the Tsugaru Strait.
The end of the war did not have an immediate impact on the people of Hokkaido, the island had been under Soviet occupation for the best part of a year by the end of the Sapporo conference and whilst the American, Commonwealth and French forces worked to establish governance in their respective occupation zones for the Soviets it was largely a matter of an administrative rubber stamp on infrastructure and organisations which already existed, at least in terms of bureaucracy.
A great deal of emphasis was put upon the war’s end nonetheless, the Japanese troops who had fled into the mountains of Hokkaido after the original Soviet invasion had continued their insurgency whilst the regime they fought for collapsed to their south. With the war over in the rest of Japan, attempts were being made in earnest to ensure that in the face of their lost cause they would finally come down from the mountains. Despite a harsh winter and the Soviet willingness to forcefully evacuate entire communities suspected of being sympathetic, burning anything that might be of use, the former subjects continued to make much of the volcanic geography hazardous for the Soviets and their allies. It was hoped that Prince Nobuhito might provide an escape clause for those still fighting for the retention of the old imperial system, as surely it would be hypocritical to ignore the regent they were fighting for?
The internal logic of a dead system provided little solace, yet the Soviets still looked towards the Japanese to enlighten their own brethren. The Japanese People’s Emancipation League, now the largest group of armed Japanese in the world, were increasingly tasked with undertaking the work of liquidating what was left of the imperialist guerrillas. Though they had been created as a guerrilla force to aid the Chinese communists they took to their new counter-insurgency role with a revolutionary zeal, with advisors from the NKVD, Soviet state security, outfitting them both with intelligence skills second to none and the extreme paranoia of the Stalinist state. There were enemies everywhere, not just in Hokkaido’s mountains but in the island’s towns and cities with anyone who didn’t seem particularly enamoured with the new Japanese-Soviet partnership being suspect, alongside those who seemed to be too happy. Despite the official rhetoric of how the Japanese proletariat had been the victims of imperialism as much as anyone else living under the Emperor’s rule it seemed like no-one could be certain that they themselves weren’t aligned to the class enemy if they weren’t in the JPEL.
A climate of fear had begun to reign across the island, though the Soviets had officially thrown the imperialists off the island at the end of 1945, the continued references to the “counter-revolutionary bandits” in the hills and endless questions about the past for anyone who’d had a modicum of status in imperial society continued to raise awkward questions that were very rarely asked. Rural workers were no longer subject to harsh and exploitative landlords yet their control of the means of production was handed out in the form of ambitious collectivisation efforts spearheaded by Soviet agricultural experts, men who often had a rather exaggerated notion of what their “advisory” role meant. Urban workers who’d successfully rebuilt much of Hokkaido in the wake of the Soviet invasion enjoyed shorter working hours and better rations under the Soviets than they had under the imperial system yet they too were often afflicted with an unease that was similar to that of their rural comrades. The efforts to unionise the workforce had been greeted with enthusiasm yet the trade unions themselves seemed to be composed of cliques based around JPEL membership. Discussion was encouraged yet voices from outside the Emancipation League’s rather doctrinal party line were often subject to harsh criticism alongside more dangerous accusations.
The line itself had undergone some changes since Sanzo Nosaka had first created the organisation in 1944, initially aimed at Japanese soldiers turning against their imperial masters the league now focused on the Japanese people as a whole and with the war over it had to espouse both the revolutionary ideal of the Japanese proletariat alongside practical reconstruction of their crippled nation. This meant land reform and workers control on the one hand yet on the other it carried the burden of new targets and quotas, the Soviet model offered a bright socialist future on the basis of hard work and common endeavour, to abandon Japan’s imperialist past and build a new state amongst its ruins. It was a beautiful image yet as inevitable as Marx’s vision was it was a future that had to be built in the fires of the class struggle. If socialism was to spread across Japan then agricultural efforts would have to be focused on ensuring the American zone of occupation could stay afloat with minimum American effort whilst Hokkaido developed its light industry and ports until it became a model for the rest of Japan to embrace.
Though working hours had been notionally lowered the demands of Soviet estimates did not match the economy of the island, in doing so workers found themselves expected to do the work of twice as many men with workers that seemed to be more on the side of the administration than their own interests.
This was a bitter pill of swallow when the administration running Hokkaido remained a foreign occupation, even with it was a fraternal one. This was a nationalist discontent which the Soviets were not blind to as they continued to govern Japan via the Red Army. Whilst Nosaka and other Japanese communists had been pressing Soviet authorities for months to allow them to establish a socialist state their comrades had continued to stall. Unilaterally declaring a new Japanese government prior to the defeat of the imperial regime would have been impossible when the Soviet Union was still part of an international coalition that had pledged to defeat and rebuild Japan together.
In the wake of the final collapse of the remaining elements of the Imperial Japanese Army a declaration of a Soviet client state remained a risk. The Soviet Union continued to exert influence on the Allied Control Council to the consternation of the other powers, cutting Hokkaido off from the rest of the Japan would be the perfect excuse for the western powers to rally together and build their own capitalist nation without any Soviet contribution.
The Soviets weren’t wrong to be paranoid, yet the western betrayal came not in Japan but in the occupied areas of the imperialist’s former ally. Whilst by 1948 the situation in their zone of Japan had not adequately improved for the Americans to consider the feasibly of Japanese economic unification, let alone its desirability, this was not yet the case in Germany where after continuous bickering, relations amongst the Allied Control Council over Germany broke down. The Americans and the British began to combine the administration and economic policies of their German occupation zones whilst their Japanese administrations grew apart. Whilst the French stalled the Soviets reacted far more drastically.
By the beginning of 1949 the Workers and Peasants Democracy of Japan officially succeeded the Soviet occupation as sole authority over Hokkaido. The “Democracy” of the socialist state was immediately put into question when Nobuhito and Nosaka’s “Coalition of the Anti-Imperialist Democratic Forces” won every seat in the People’s Assembly when the young nation went to polls in the spring.
Despite the so-called “People’s Palace” where the Assembly would sit still being under construction in Sapporo, there was one policy that could not wait to be passed in the new worker’s state.
Until the American occupation of Japan ceased, the Provisional Japanese Authority could no longer rely on any food coming across the Tsugaru Strait.
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One thing that Republicans and Democrats usually agreed upon in this period was the value or importance in protecting and subsidizing American agriculture. With the war over, American farmers are no longer going to benefit from guaranteed purchases and fixed prices, and are also going to have to contend with serious foreign competition from countries outside Europe and East/Southeast Asia that had no war damage and developed the same excess capacity.
So the solution is simple: Provide American farmers a guaranteed market (potentially with minimum prices and other benefits) and provide occupied Japan with the purchased food; with the Provisional Japanese Authority (and eventual Japanese state) buying this food through a Lend-Lease style credit arrangement that at least in theory provides some assurance that the United States will eventually be getting repaid. This helps provide political cover such that politicians can say that they didn't approve a "wasteful" level of charity to the Japanese, but simply facilitated exports for the hard-working American farmer.
The Far Eastern Berlin Blockade.
Did the Berlin Blockade still happen ITTL?
Did the Berlin Blockade still happen ITTL?
Oh, goody. Brinksmanship in the East. No wonder it'll be a cold day in Hell before TTL Japan is united again.
Yeah but as you might imagine it's been somewhat overshadowed ITTL.
The Future Lies Ahead
America started 1949 with Harry Truman departing the White House into the private relief of self-imposed exile in his home state of Missouri. Similar to the people of Hokkaido had gone to the polls in the fall of 1948 as the new President of the world’s most powerful nation was elected to take the reins from arguably the country’s most controversial leader.
Despite Truman sticking to his private pledge not to run in 1948 his legacy clung to the Democrats like a bad smell, the poorly handled invasion of Japan and the subsequently “lenient” occupation caused many Americans to remember their relatives and friends now dead or see those still alive yet now forever mentally or physically disabled whenever they saw Truman or any other Democrat. Few high-profile party leaders wished to campaign for a nomination which seemed to ensure certain defeat and as such the task of taking on the Republicans fell to an opportunistic soldier who believed he had the unique ability to turn back the tide.
Brigadier General James Roosevelt, son of Truman’s late predecessor, had initially been behind a campaign to draft the universally popular General Dwight Eisenhower for the nomination yet when the hero of the European theatre insisted on political neutrality the fellow officer was able to argue that he had similar qualities that might save his party from seemingly inevitable defeat. Roosevelt had served in the Pacific with the Marines and developed a heroic persona carefully crafted by his father to boost his son’s profile and to show anxious parents that his own son was fighting in battles alongside many others. The connection to his father was arguably of greater importance, with Truman’s decision not to run it was hoped that the President could be excused as an unfortunate accident, a bad memory that the public would hopefully forget when they saw the chance to elect another Roosevelt. With little high-profile competition Roosevelt secured the Democratic nomination with ease on the promise that, like his father, he couldn’t lose.
Although he enjoyed aesthetic advantages personally, his party’s nomination came with dismal prospects. The American economy had remained sluggish with unemployment having risen greatly alongside several strikes. The Republicans had forced Truman into signing off on increasingly harsh anti-union legislation in exchange for extending the deadline for achieving Japanese “self-sufficiency”. In solving these problems Roosevelt seemed to have platitudes and whilst the Democratic candidate remained personally favourable, the public image of the Democrats as a whole continued to be that of Truman.
Almost as if they agreed with the public, the party itself was coming apart at the seams for various reasons. The vocal if somewhat disingenuous promises that Roosevelt and his supporters had made to improve the plight of African-Americans in the southern states had caused a complete breakdown in the relationship between much of the southern establishment, the so-called “Dixiecrats”, and the national party. Paranoid for years that Roosevelt and Truman had been betraying them in their eyes over the issue of civil rights, many high-profile southern Democrats led by Senator Strom Thurmond declared that this was the last straw and alongside several state delegations announced that they would run their own candidate. The region of the country that had been unshakeably loyal to the Democratic party, the so-called “Solid South” was now in electoral revolt via Thurmond’s toxic blend of racism, religious fundamentalism and xenophobia.
Civil rights had also helped to motivate former Vice President Henry Wallace to run his own candidacy for President via the newly created Progressive Party. Wallace’s views on civil rights were decades ahead of his time yet he didn’t care when deriding the inherent racism faced by African-Americans and other minorities within the state, and often federal, governments. Agriculture was his passion and he promised security for American farmers, urban workers were guaranteed higher wages, shorter hours and generous pensions in an America that treated other nations as equals and kept the promises of a global community forged in the fires of the fight against fascism. It was a beautiful vision for those willing to buy into it and his supporters were some of the most earnest in ensuring that their candidate could somehow breakthrough what they saw as reactionary efforts to keep him from victory.
It was no secret that the establishment hated Wallace, and he’d given them more than enough ammunition to hit him with. Whilst former Vice President was respected for the candour that shone out from an outspoken nature in regards to his views, no matter how controversial, left Wallace repellent to large parts of the American population. His unconditional support for trade unions and his calls for friendlier relations with the Soviet Union left many to accuse him of being a communist. His views on civil rights made him politically toxic for the Democratic establishment in the south, yet his views on the Japanese angered many across the nation even more.
Having resigned from Truman’s cabinet over the issue of mustard gas he had spent the rest of the war as a vocal critic of the President and his administration declaring the continued use of atomic and chemical weapons on increasingly questionable targets both unnecessary and morally wrong. He warned that Japanese-Americans on the west coast were in danger of facing the same injustice African-Americans suffered in the Deep South and that this was a sign of America tearing up many of the liberties they were fighting for against the Japanese imperialists.
Wallace had arguably been exaggerating yet with the war over Japanese-Americans did often find themselves unwanted at best and often actively persecuted, the state was no longer willing to provide for them directly and offered no compensation for losses suffered during the war. The old racism of the “yellow peril” dominated the views of many of their fellow Americans in the wake of the conflict, sowing the seeds of ghettoization. Few banks would lend capital to get new businesses off the ground, businesses that did often found themselves subject to passive boycotts, vandalism and intimidation. Workers struggled to find work in businesses that weren’t Japanese-American or in the public sector, there was little money to put food on the table and few prospects for the future. Many attempted to emigrate, primarily to Brazil, only to find that few nations were willing to take large numbers of Japanese-Americans hence they provoke a large-scale migration. Trapped in a country that didn’t seem to want them, poverty and destitution became widespread with the army often being the only outlet for the powerless minority.
The racism against Japanese-Americans existed in the army just as much as in wider society, yet even those unable of the most basic decency towards their fellow human beings were aware that people who could speak both English and Japanese would be useful in the occupation of Japan. The offer of a stable income the family at home was an impetus for a large number of Japanese-American men yet perhaps not as many as there might have been. Many feared that they would never be allowed to leave their ancestral homeland and that it was the first stage in what many Americans were calling for, the deportation of all Japanese-Americans back to Japan. Others were more rational in their fears, aware that their children were subject to vicious bullying at school and that their wives were scared to go outside at night. It was a time for hanging together, and in Henry Wallace they had some glimmer of hope.
Aware of the ire Wallace received from the majority of the American public by touring the miserable slums full of Japanese-Americans and expressing his solidarity with their plight, Roosevelt preferred to look the other way. Though the Democratic candidate did not actively indulge in race baiting he judged the travails of the minority as too controversial a cause if he wanted to turn the election around.
Roosevelt’s Republican opponent was a kindred spirit in trying not to rock the boat, Thomas Dewey had been easily defeat by Roosevelt’s father four years beforehand yet now his lead in the polls seemed unassailable, to the extent that Dewey was afraid that only he could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory personally. Dewey had not fought in the war but he was nonetheless popular for his gang-busting, anti-mafia exploits as the District Attorney for New York. Having been elected Governor of the state he was far more experienced than Roosevelt despite only being a few years older and whilst his party had become steadily more conservative he remained the consistent in his support for what he termed “compassionate capitalism”, a nation where everyone would have opportunity having been freed from bureaucracy and special interests. The specifics of Dewey’s vision were rather sparse, the overly cautious candidate was constantly wary of being tripped up on policy, a feature he largely shared with his opponent. Whether it was down to a lack of knowledge or simply a wariness of being compared to Truman, the Democrat also spoke in generalisations.
Whilst Thurmond did not campaign outside the south and Wallace seemed to be faced with more hecklers than supporters wherever he went neither Dewey nor Roosevelt’s bland visions didn’t seem to many voters at all yet this was fatal only for the latter. With Truman’s administration as his ammunition Dewey didn’t need to talk about himself and whilst Roosevelt remained above the attacks he never really managed to move public attention away from them. The bizarre yet unassailable electoral coalition his father had built to save the American economy and win the war had fallen apart around the son and soon his fellow party members were hanging him out to dry, Democratic funds were increasingly focused on congressional elections with the Presidency lost. Roosevelt continued to rally against the tide in vague soliloquy until November.
Dewey’s landslide victory did not match the rather mild public opinion of their new President yet with new inauguration they finally got an idea of what “compassionate capitalism” would look like, with the promise ambitious housing projects, lower taxes, a renewed quest for civil rights at home and a new relationship with America’s friends and former enemies abroad. It was a vision that many could get behind, bi-partisanship became the way forward with the new President’s close relationship to congressional Democrats and his willingness to put Democrats in his cabinet, those within the Republican party who viewed Dewey as too liberal or internationalist were wary of opposing their increasingly popular leader, at least temporarily. “Happy Days Are Here Again” may have been heard emanating from inside the White House, yet unlike his predecessor Dewey could not play the piano.
His honeymoon would not last long.
America started 1949 with Harry Truman departing the White House into the private relief of self-imposed exile in his home state of Missouri. Similar to the people of Hokkaido had gone to the polls in the fall of 1948 as the new President of the world’s most powerful nation was elected to take the reins from arguably the country’s most controversial leader.
Despite Truman sticking to his private pledge not to run in 1948 his legacy clung to the Democrats like a bad smell, the poorly handled invasion of Japan and the subsequently “lenient” occupation caused many Americans to remember their relatives and friends now dead or see those still alive yet now forever mentally or physically disabled whenever they saw Truman or any other Democrat. Few high-profile party leaders wished to campaign for a nomination which seemed to ensure certain defeat and as such the task of taking on the Republicans fell to an opportunistic soldier who believed he had the unique ability to turn back the tide.
Brigadier General James Roosevelt, son of Truman’s late predecessor, had initially been behind a campaign to draft the universally popular General Dwight Eisenhower for the nomination yet when the hero of the European theatre insisted on political neutrality the fellow officer was able to argue that he had similar qualities that might save his party from seemingly inevitable defeat. Roosevelt had served in the Pacific with the Marines and developed a heroic persona carefully crafted by his father to boost his son’s profile and to show anxious parents that his own son was fighting in battles alongside many others. The connection to his father was arguably of greater importance, with Truman’s decision not to run it was hoped that the President could be excused as an unfortunate accident, a bad memory that the public would hopefully forget when they saw the chance to elect another Roosevelt. With little high-profile competition Roosevelt secured the Democratic nomination with ease on the promise that, like his father, he couldn’t lose.
Although he enjoyed aesthetic advantages personally, his party’s nomination came with dismal prospects. The American economy had remained sluggish with unemployment having risen greatly alongside several strikes. The Republicans had forced Truman into signing off on increasingly harsh anti-union legislation in exchange for extending the deadline for achieving Japanese “self-sufficiency”. In solving these problems Roosevelt seemed to have platitudes and whilst the Democratic candidate remained personally favourable, the public image of the Democrats as a whole continued to be that of Truman.
Almost as if they agreed with the public, the party itself was coming apart at the seams for various reasons. The vocal if somewhat disingenuous promises that Roosevelt and his supporters had made to improve the plight of African-Americans in the southern states had caused a complete breakdown in the relationship between much of the southern establishment, the so-called “Dixiecrats”, and the national party. Paranoid for years that Roosevelt and Truman had been betraying them in their eyes over the issue of civil rights, many high-profile southern Democrats led by Senator Strom Thurmond declared that this was the last straw and alongside several state delegations announced that they would run their own candidate. The region of the country that had been unshakeably loyal to the Democratic party, the so-called “Solid South” was now in electoral revolt via Thurmond’s toxic blend of racism, religious fundamentalism and xenophobia.
Civil rights had also helped to motivate former Vice President Henry Wallace to run his own candidacy for President via the newly created Progressive Party. Wallace’s views on civil rights were decades ahead of his time yet he didn’t care when deriding the inherent racism faced by African-Americans and other minorities within the state, and often federal, governments. Agriculture was his passion and he promised security for American farmers, urban workers were guaranteed higher wages, shorter hours and generous pensions in an America that treated other nations as equals and kept the promises of a global community forged in the fires of the fight against fascism. It was a beautiful vision for those willing to buy into it and his supporters were some of the most earnest in ensuring that their candidate could somehow breakthrough what they saw as reactionary efforts to keep him from victory.
It was no secret that the establishment hated Wallace, and he’d given them more than enough ammunition to hit him with. Whilst former Vice President was respected for the candour that shone out from an outspoken nature in regards to his views, no matter how controversial, left Wallace repellent to large parts of the American population. His unconditional support for trade unions and his calls for friendlier relations with the Soviet Union left many to accuse him of being a communist. His views on civil rights made him politically toxic for the Democratic establishment in the south, yet his views on the Japanese angered many across the nation even more.
Having resigned from Truman’s cabinet over the issue of mustard gas he had spent the rest of the war as a vocal critic of the President and his administration declaring the continued use of atomic and chemical weapons on increasingly questionable targets both unnecessary and morally wrong. He warned that Japanese-Americans on the west coast were in danger of facing the same injustice African-Americans suffered in the Deep South and that this was a sign of America tearing up many of the liberties they were fighting for against the Japanese imperialists.
Wallace had arguably been exaggerating yet with the war over Japanese-Americans did often find themselves unwanted at best and often actively persecuted, the state was no longer willing to provide for them directly and offered no compensation for losses suffered during the war. The old racism of the “yellow peril” dominated the views of many of their fellow Americans in the wake of the conflict, sowing the seeds of ghettoization. Few banks would lend capital to get new businesses off the ground, businesses that did often found themselves subject to passive boycotts, vandalism and intimidation. Workers struggled to find work in businesses that weren’t Japanese-American or in the public sector, there was little money to put food on the table and few prospects for the future. Many attempted to emigrate, primarily to Brazil, only to find that few nations were willing to take large numbers of Japanese-Americans hence they provoke a large-scale migration. Trapped in a country that didn’t seem to want them, poverty and destitution became widespread with the army often being the only outlet for the powerless minority.
The racism against Japanese-Americans existed in the army just as much as in wider society, yet even those unable of the most basic decency towards their fellow human beings were aware that people who could speak both English and Japanese would be useful in the occupation of Japan. The offer of a stable income the family at home was an impetus for a large number of Japanese-American men yet perhaps not as many as there might have been. Many feared that they would never be allowed to leave their ancestral homeland and that it was the first stage in what many Americans were calling for, the deportation of all Japanese-Americans back to Japan. Others were more rational in their fears, aware that their children were subject to vicious bullying at school and that their wives were scared to go outside at night. It was a time for hanging together, and in Henry Wallace they had some glimmer of hope.
Aware of the ire Wallace received from the majority of the American public by touring the miserable slums full of Japanese-Americans and expressing his solidarity with their plight, Roosevelt preferred to look the other way. Though the Democratic candidate did not actively indulge in race baiting he judged the travails of the minority as too controversial a cause if he wanted to turn the election around.
Roosevelt’s Republican opponent was a kindred spirit in trying not to rock the boat, Thomas Dewey had been easily defeat by Roosevelt’s father four years beforehand yet now his lead in the polls seemed unassailable, to the extent that Dewey was afraid that only he could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory personally. Dewey had not fought in the war but he was nonetheless popular for his gang-busting, anti-mafia exploits as the District Attorney for New York. Having been elected Governor of the state he was far more experienced than Roosevelt despite only being a few years older and whilst his party had become steadily more conservative he remained the consistent in his support for what he termed “compassionate capitalism”, a nation where everyone would have opportunity having been freed from bureaucracy and special interests. The specifics of Dewey’s vision were rather sparse, the overly cautious candidate was constantly wary of being tripped up on policy, a feature he largely shared with his opponent. Whether it was down to a lack of knowledge or simply a wariness of being compared to Truman, the Democrat also spoke in generalisations.
Whilst Thurmond did not campaign outside the south and Wallace seemed to be faced with more hecklers than supporters wherever he went neither Dewey nor Roosevelt’s bland visions didn’t seem to many voters at all yet this was fatal only for the latter. With Truman’s administration as his ammunition Dewey didn’t need to talk about himself and whilst Roosevelt remained above the attacks he never really managed to move public attention away from them. The bizarre yet unassailable electoral coalition his father had built to save the American economy and win the war had fallen apart around the son and soon his fellow party members were hanging him out to dry, Democratic funds were increasingly focused on congressional elections with the Presidency lost. Roosevelt continued to rally against the tide in vague soliloquy until November.
Dewey’s landslide victory did not match the rather mild public opinion of their new President yet with new inauguration they finally got an idea of what “compassionate capitalism” would look like, with the promise ambitious housing projects, lower taxes, a renewed quest for civil rights at home and a new relationship with America’s friends and former enemies abroad. It was a vision that many could get behind, bi-partisanship became the way forward with the new President’s close relationship to congressional Democrats and his willingness to put Democrats in his cabinet, those within the Republican party who viewed Dewey as too liberal or internationalist were wary of opposing their increasingly popular leader, at least temporarily. “Happy Days Are Here Again” may have been heard emanating from inside the White House, yet unlike his predecessor Dewey could not play the piano.
His honeymoon would not last long.
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Well, Taft might not be around but life in this timeline is still going to fairly terrible.
John Farson
Banned
So Japanese-Americans by and large are the victims of scapegoating, discrimination and outright persecution in post-war America. I suppose the only area where the Japanese might do somewhat well would be Hawaii, on account of there being so many of them in the first place. How would, say, Chinese-Americans, Filipino-Americans and Korean-Americans treat the Japanese? Would they also participate in the discrimination both out of ethnic antipathy and a desire to elevate their own social status?
It's occurred to me that with total Japanese deaths in TTL's World War II being over 35 million or so, and with the few million extra deaths throughout Asia, the total number of deaths in the entire WWII here would be over 95 million or so, a staggering number when one remembers that the world population in 1940 was 2.3 billion or so.
It's occurred to me that with total Japanese deaths in TTL's World War II being over 35 million or so, and with the few million extra deaths throughout Asia, the total number of deaths in the entire WWII here would be over 95 million or so, a staggering number when one remembers that the world population in 1940 was 2.3 billion or so.
Honestly, Dewey is going to have a tough plate.
He's got some serious domestic tensions he needs to fix, otherwise the Commies get some nice possible 5th Columns to use against him.
I always liked him and hope for the best he can lead the United States well in the first few post war years.
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