Red Room Where the Writers Are

Ann Seymour

On October 25, 1945: UN Charter signed. MacArthur orders all military statues in Japan destroyed, so naval officers cut Yamamoto's in half and threw it into a lake. However, they made a chart of where it sank, and later men dredged up the head and shoulders. Liberated American POWs are forced to sign confidentiality documents drawn up by the Army stating they would not tell what happened in the Japanese biological warfare and slave labor prisons. If they did, they faced Court Martial. At the War Crimes trials, MacArthur finds some Japanese guilty, exonerates others. Mitsuo Fuchida of Pearl Harbor fame, for example, survives, prospers, and writes his memoirs. The men who hang go to the gallows shouting, "Banzai!" The day of the executions, Crown Prince Akihito cancels the birthday party he’d planned for himself. Still, he manages to get in his usual round of golf.On February 23, 1946, General Yamashita is executed at Los Banos, the Philippines, after a brief military trial. In 1989, the Japanese government offers the Philippine government $250 million to return General Yamashita's bones for a proper Shinto burial. The Philippine government refuses. In 1989, Hirohito dies after the longest reign of any 20C monarch. On August 1, 2001, Prime Minister Ichiro Koizumi makes an official visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, where the bodies of the war criminals hung by the allies are interred. In protest, China and Korea threaten to sever relations with Japan.     Sixteen million American men and women served in uniform during the war, two-thirds in the army and army air force, one-third in the navy and marines. Merchant marines supplied the troops. The approximate death toll: 50,000,000. The US, at least 300,000, Britain, 500,000; Germany, over 4,500,000; Japan, around 2,000,000; France, 500,000; Russia, 20,000,000; Holland, 200,000; China, 30,000,000; India, 1,500,000; Yugoslavia, 1,000,000; Hungary, Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria, 500,000; Italy, 1,500,000. Estimated costs of the war in millions of US dollars, 1946 value: Allies: Australia, $10,036; Belgium, $6,324; Canada, $20,104; China, $49,072; France, $111,272; India, $4,804; Netherlands, $9,624; New Zealand, $2,560; Norway, $992; South Africa, $2,152; United Kingdom, $103,150; United States, $288,000; USSR, $93,012; Axis: Germany, $212,336; Italy, $21,072; Japan, $41272. Governmental expenditures during World War Two for war material and armaments added up to $1,154 billion (1946 value). Britain, $120 billion; the United States, $317 billion; the Soviet Union, $192 billion; Italy, $4 billion; Germany, $272 billion, for example. Official government expenditures did include allowance for damage to civilian property. Approximate losses due to damage, 1946 values: Soviet Union, $128 billion; Britain, $5 billion; Germany, $75 billion; and other European countries, approximately $230 billion total. If these costs seem high, remember to adjust for inflation, which means twelve times higher in 2009 dollars.