Customer Reviews

In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

On July 26, 1945, the goverments of the U.S., Britain, and China issued the Potsdam Declaration, a document that in no uncertain terms demands the unconditional surrender of Japan or it will face "prompt and utter destruction". Japan refused to surrender.

On August 6, 1945, the U.S. drops the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union breaks its neutrality pact with Japan and invades Manchuria, which was still under Japanese control. The Supreme Council in Japan met that morning, August 9, to discuss the import of the atomic bomb attack (at the time there was a serious question whether the U.S. had the ability to make more than just one) and the Soviets' invasion of Manchuria (which many in the Japanese military downplayed). During that very meeting, news arrived that the U.S. had dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on Nagasaki. During the next several days intense talks among the Emperor, the government, and the military over possible surrender (including peace feelers to the Allies) took place, with a military coup to avoid surrender and continue fighting a very real possibility. On August 13, the Emperor agreed to surrender. On August 14, a military coup was attempted, but failed. (That same night, August 14-15, the U.S. conducted its largest bombing raid in the Pacific theatre with 1000 planes dropping bombs on eight Japanese cities.) On August 15, 1945, the Emperor's recorded surrender speech was broadcast to the Japanese people.

Although August 15, 1945 is generally considered to be the end of World War II, the fighting did not automatically stop. Before its surrender (formally ratified September 2, 1945 aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay), Japan still controlled vast swaths of territory in other countries throughout Asia, including China, Manchuria, and Korea (in Indonesia, fka the Dutch East Indies, the Japanese granted independence just prior to their surrender and withdrawal). Under the terms of surrender Japan had to relinquish all such territory. This created a power vacuum.

Ronald Spector's "In the Ruins of Empire" ably discusses the tumult and turmoil that roiled Asia, primarily between nationalist forces and their previously evicted colonial/imperial conquerors, directly after Japan's surrender.

As each of the victorious Allies (the U.S., Britain, China, and the Soviets) and returning powers (e.g., the French, the Dutch) entered territories and nations under Japan's former sphere of influence, they had different objectives and there were widely varying results.

The simmering internal feud between Mao's communist forces and Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist regime for control of China, for example, was back on in full but the enlistment by the U.S. of a few troops to aid the Nationalists was ineffective.

Also explored are the brutal wars between nationalists and colonialists that erupted in Vietnam and Indonesia after the war, which in both instances led to the eventual withdrawal by the French and Dutch from these countries.

The author also examine the brutal ethnic war that broke out in Malaysia between the Malaysians and the Chinese minority living in that country as well as the attempts by the Soviets and Americans to influence events in Korea, which, of course, eventually split into two nations.

There are two underlying theme of the events portrayed in the book. First, the U.S. was unprepared to assume any significant role in guiding post-war events in Asia. (At the time of Japan's surrender, focus in the U.S. had been on the invasion of Japan and a protracted fight to the last man by the Japanese Army.) Second, man's nature (as well as nature itself) abhors a vacuum and the attempt to displace that vacuum is, more often than not, brutal, petty, and irrational.

All in all, the book is a thought-provoking examination of the displacement of power from a political and historical perspective. Must reading for those interested in World War II, the modern history of Asia, and the Cold War.

Most WWII histories act as if all hostile action ended on September 2 when the Japanese surrendered on the USS Missouri. Mr. Spector in this book shows that in many regards that the end of that drama was the beginning of another one.

This book does an excellent job of exploring an under reported aspect of the Second World War and helps to explain why in the 20 years after the end of the War, east Asia became such a global hotspot. A great deal of attention is given to the failed attempts and assumptions of the European powers that they would simply walk back in and return to their lives as formal colonial masters. Mr. Spector does a great job exploring the various nationalistic conflicts and explaining why some were so violent and others were not.

This is a great read for anyone who wants to learn more about the end of World War II in Asia or of Asian history in general.

The surrender of Japan in August 1945 unleased a series of events which led to the collapse of the British, French and Dutch Colonial Empires and the resumption of the Chinese Civil War. The political decisions made in the war's immediate aftermath laid the foundation for a series bloody wars that would rage across East Asia for the next thirty years. This is the big and important type of history that educated people need to know if they want to understand the second half of the Twentieth Century.

The value of "In The Ruins of Empire" is that it examines the big picture. Instead of having to read the detailed histories of individual counties, Ronald Spector presents the reader with succinct summaries of what was happening in a number of East Asian countries. By looking at the big picture, Spector keeps the reader from getting bogged down in the small details. Ronald Spector is a conscienitous historian and does an admirable job of weaving the various plot lines together.

Of all the history to write, big picture history is the most difficult to create. It requires a very sure narrative hand. Only the most gifted writers can do it well. Although, Ronald Spector is an able historian, he is no Niall Ferguson, Tony Judt or Norman Davies. Spector had a great idea in writing a popular history of 1945-1947 in East Asia. Unfortunately, he does not have the writing skill to lift this book from four stars to five stars.

As a final note, for anyone interested in this time period, I would recommend that they check out "The Aftermath: Asia" the last volume in the Time/Life series on World War II. There are some amazing photos of post war Asia that really add to the experience of reading "In the Ruins of Empire." The Chinese photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson are especially memorable. These great photos tell a truth that only the most gifted of writers can come close to conveying.

Drawing on reports and dispatches from the Office of Strategic Services as well primary source documents from both Asian and American soldiers from the years immediately after WWII, Ronald Spector takes a fresh look at a pivotal point in history in "The Ruins of Empire. As WWII ended, the Japanese surrender left a power vacuum in East Asia; countries previously under the yoke of the Japanese stood poised to claim their independence even as the American and European powers rushed in to recapture what they considered their old empire. Spanning 4 years and 5 countries, Spector's narrative documents the struggle for power and independence in the aftermath of a war that never ended for millions of Asians. Though the account is fascinating, Spector's work would have been well-served with additional context on the history, politics, ideology of the various struggles that served as a foundation to the struggles even prior to Allied re-occupation. As it is, the accounts--excellent in that they are primary sources from real people who experienced the events--seem too narrow to capture the intensely complex forces at work. Yet Ruins is worth the read because it is well-written and inherently interesting.

Spector's purpose in writing Ruins was not simply to write a history of the post-WWII East Asia. "Ruins" also serves as a series of case studies illustrating how disasterous occupations of foreign countries can be. Spector's narrative of the independence struggles against European re-occupations in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the American Korea, make a convincing case that the successful occupations of Japan and Germany were the exception rather than the rule. The re-occupations of Vietnam and Indonesia were categorical failures inflicted by countries that had recently emerged from their own imperialist threats only months earlier (Great Britain, France, and China all had a role in occupying Vietnam when Japan fell). The failure of America and Russia to build a unified Korea during their occupation led directly to the Korean war only 5 years later. Britain's reoccupation of Malaysia soon found them embroiled in a bitter decade long guerilla war. Japan's occupation and then Russia's re-occupation of Manchuria proved to have a devastating effect on China and may have set back industrial advances by years.

Ruins begins with an OSS' mission to find and repatriate American POWs held captive in Japanese Manchuria and Korea. This vignette sets the stage for the disintegration of China into civil war even as communist and nationalist armies jockeyed to fill the void left by Japan as her (as yet unbeaten) troops were repatriated. What is remarkable about the China narrative is how weak the Chinese Communist position appeared to be following the Japanese surrender. They had inferior weapons (many of which were appropriated from the defeated Japanese), their communist Russian allies had abandoned them, stripping their Manchurian base of much of its industrial capacity, and America was giving military and transportation assistance to their nationalist adversaries. However, as Liddell Hart has emphasized, the moral dimensions of war often mitigate material disadvantages found between enemies. The Chinese Communists had, through their constant battles with the Japanese, gained credibility in Chinese eyes while the Chinese Nationalist government was viewed as a corrupt kleptocracy. The communists had built up enough of a base of support that their strategy of transitioning to and from guerilla warfare allowed them to maintain organization and strength long enough withstand the initial advance of nationalist forces.

Two notable features present in the China conflict and true of Vietnam, Malaysia, Korea, and Indonesia combined to draw America into two East Asian wars in the ensuing decades. First, American policy-makers were unprepared to deal with the complexities of engaging the burgeoning nationalists movements. Second, American and European policy-makers did not understand or underestimated the resilience and organizational strength of the communist organizations in East Asia.

Drawing on first-hand accounts from the diplomats and soldiers involved, Spector highlights the absence of meaningful policy direction from Washington DC. American policy-makers vacillated on whether and to what degree the US should intervene in the internal affairs of the various countries as they tried to work out their independence--especially so in China. The American inclination was towards peace--a peace that ensured no communist rule---a bias that created a contradiction in policy and therefore ineffective action. Similarly in Korea, General Hodge's occupation was an improvisation fraught with error that effectively prevented the possibility of Korean unification. In Malaysia, Indonesia, and especially in Vietnam, the US stood by while the European powers--led by Great Britain on behalf of itself, the Netherlands, and the French--attempted to reassert their claim to empire. The US' failure to stand up for the independence movements in each country puzzled communists and non-communist nationalists alike as this stance went directly against US declarations of support for national independence. This position would not go unpunished in the years ahead.

The second feature of the East Asian conflicts, with the partial exception of Indonesia was how prominent communist forces were in the struggles for independence. China and Vietnam's communist forces had been organized for nearly two decades by the time the Allied occupations came. This meant that the communist organizations in these countries had a well-developed political base, an institutional infrastructure, and the years of struggle against the Japanese had in turn produced a military capability to carry on the struggle against whoever else attempted to control their country. The ensuing conflicts between the re-occupying Allies and the communists would cost hundreds of thousands of lives in China, Vietnam, Korea, and Malaysia. Only in Indonesia did the communist forces play a secondary role to non-communist nationalists in the struggle for independence. Only in Malaysia did the communist insurgency die out after 15 years of counter-insurgency efforts by the British. The Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese experiences with communism are all well known now.

Ultimately, Ruins is a cautionary tale about the powerful motivations of culture and nationality in resisting control by foreign powers. Failure to understand these motivations and the consistent underestimation of local guerilla forces to draw on these motivations in their search for power led directly to communist tyranny in three East Asian countries in less than 10 years after the Japanese surrender. Spector advises us to learn from these lessons as we face a potent radical Islamic guerilla force through the world and adjust our response accordingly.

Prof. Jiu-Hwa Upshur writes of this book: "Spector uses a wide range of sources, including archival materials from several countries, to construct a riveting and compelling account of events in Asia immediately after Japan's surrender. He documents the widespread chaos that characterized war-ravaged Asia, the legacy of Japan's imperialism and vicious treatment of conquered peoples. As in Europe, where the conflicting goals of the superpowers and newly freed peoples took years to play out, across Asia ideological hostilities prolonged old conflicts and spawned new ones that cost millions of lives and continued for many years. Spector also assesses the record of the major world players in managing post-war Asia. Six good maps, detailed footnotes, and a useful bibliography make this work a notable addition to the literature of the aftermath of World War II." [Read more at www.miwsr.com/2009/20090304.asp]

This book gives a good picture of the different ways that years of growing contradictions within European and Japanese imperialism burst into the open after the collapse of the Japanese empire. Having bankrupted itself during World War II, Great Britain was a little more circumspect about reestablishing its empire than was France or the Netherlands who wanted to dreamt of past domination because they needed the income and were hell-bent on erasing the humiliation they suffered during the war by imposing it on others. Then there were the American's who saved the Asia but were torn between their new won mantle, their claim to democracy, suspicion of old world imperialism and their own desire to dominate. And the Russians whose influence was mostly along their borders and a bit within local communist parties.

The immediate historical challenges were the huge: undefeated Japanese armies occupying lands some of whose peoples wanted freedom from both the Japanese and their former colonial rulers while others had collaborated or were allied with the colonialists. On top of this were internal ethnic conflicts, some bred by colonialism. With few exceptions, once they were convinced the Emperor had surrendered, the Japanese forces gave power over to the conquerors or exercised power under their direction. Until the Allies had sufficient troops in place they needed the Japanese to keep order.

From Mongolia to New Guinea the only place where things went well was in the southern Dutch East Indies where the Australian occupying troops took over and treated the locals humanely. Elsewhere success was uneven and failure predominated. The locals in Malaysia, Vietnam and the Netherlands Indies viewed the returning colonialists as "the same old arrogance you saw before the war. And you felt annoyed because these swine who were beaten by the Japs... were coming back here without having to fire a shot were still wearing that same kind of arrogant face." In Malaya and Singapore the British were the most successful because the Labour Party knew that empire was finished and Mountbatten preferred colonial independence. Vietnam was a catastrophe because it had a powerful independence movement, divided religious communities, and revanchist French colonialists backed by the mother country. Ho and the Vietminh probably deserved their freedom because of their anti-Japanese activities but they faced not only the returning French but Kuomintang occupiers, a large French community, dissidents in the north and southerners who were Christian or royalist. Despite the attempt to finesse things, the Vietminh violently repressed the opposition, were able to get the Chinese off their necks and found themselves in an all out war with the French and their Vietnamese allies. We know the painful outcome of this. The forces of independence faced an analogous situation in the Netherlands East Indies but won more easily.

But it was in China and Manchuria where chaos reigned. Entering the war at the US's insistence before the A bomb proved so decisive, Russian battled hardened troops transferred from Europe swept through Manchuria into northern China capturing millions of Japanese troops, stealing the industrial base and settling down to exercise economic dominance. In Korea the situation was kind of a fools playground. No one seemed to have known what they wanted and what to do. The Russians created a puppet government in the north whose incompetent designated leader was later able to lead his bosses by the nose. In the south the Americans managed to alienate their hosts and ended with a their own leader who was just as problematic as the Russian's puppet. The grounds of the Korean war were laid in both American and Russian stupidity.

Returning to China: a subject much written on. The author adds little new but it is worthwhile to repeat the story of intractable conflict between a corrupt Kuomintang and hardened communist forces who addressed real needs but were intractable and eventually caused untold misery. The occupiers pirouetted between using the Japanese to hold things together and negotiating with the major combatants. Although many Americans understood the corruption of the Nationalists, the US ended up coming down on their side which made little difference except maybe extending the suffering. Poor George Marshall, his charisma barely held things together then they spiraled down under the pressure of incommensurable forces.

Prior to WWII, because of decrepit China, colonialism and Japanese influence, Asia was a land of obvious fissures. The Japanese Empire's military success and ultimate failure left those fissures exposed. The political, social and humanitarian earthquakes to which they gave rise began begun to subside just twenty years ago, thirty five years after surrender. Only North Korea and a Cambodia still exhibit the wreckage. But think of the human tragedies in between. Who is to blame? The author shows that there were few parties who do not bear some responsibility. The Japanese along with the Australians behaved the best. The Americans were more clumsy than cruel though they erred in the direction of enabling the forces of reaction. The Russians did their thing, with a veneer of cruelty, desperate to rebuild their devastated country and the defeat around made for ripe pickings. The British knew but couldn't quiet admit their time was past. The French and the Dutch were needlessly arrogant. Then the Malays, Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Manchurians and Indonesians all bear some responsibility for the mayhem. The question always is how much less would the latters' self-destruction have been had not outsiders interfered. I wonder what Ho would have created in Vietnam if he hadn't had to fight from 1945 until 1975? Maybe it would have been like Yugoslavia, not a bad society until it collapsed, or maybe Rumania?

This is a good book because it gives one another way of thinking about what WWII wrought.


Charlie Fisher author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World

I found the book an excellent read. It tells the story of post-war asia that most people don't read about after the end of the war in the pacific. The confusing state of affairs between the time of the Japanese surrender to the return of stability to the East Asian region is something that is generally forgotten, falling thru the cracks between the greater history telling of the epic battles of WW2, and the newly minted histories of independence for the countries of the region.

However, I found the book seemed to end rather abruptly, terminating in midpoint without ending in what I would have assumed to be a more logical endpoint for the book, at the point of independence for the various nations concerned.

Instead, for example the book ends in its story of Vietnam at the point in which the French re-establish control of Hanoi and the Vietminh under Ho Chi Minh retreats into the countryside to prepare for war against the returned colonial master. Similar is the abrupt end to the story of Indonesia with the return of the Dutch and in Malaysia with the return of the English. The book fails to cover the continuing strife and struggles of Bien Dien Phu or the "Emergency" of British Malaya against the communist insurgence and the later "Konfantasi" with Indonesia.

Spector does a great job of showing what came after the Missouri surrender ceremony. Millions of undefeated Japanese soldiers occupying China, the Dutch East Indies, Indochina, Malaya, and Korea needed to be evacuated and returned to Japan. What was left was a political vacuum that needed to be occupied and the Dutch, French, Chinese, Soviet, British, and American governments sought to do this. However, many of these occupied lands had enough of the occupation and wanted their independence. The political struggles that occupied these lands would consume the world's attention for the next fifty years. Critical hot spots like China, Korea, and Vietnam would result in civil wars of extreme brutality. America was drawn into all three of these civil conflicts.

Spector does a good job of detailing these conflicts in the first two years after the end of the war. This was indeed a messy affair. Future conflicts were the result. This a nice required read for those interested in post World War II Asia. It shows why conflicts developed in many of these lands.

This is a great summary of Asia in the post-war years. I was surprised at the extent of US and European involvement in China, Korea, and other countries after Japan surrendered.

One of the key themes is how foreign liberating armies can soon become occupiers. Americans in China soon found this out after US marines were accused of raping a Chinese student. In other countries, the liberating army unleashed the powers of nationalism before the old colonial powers could reestablish the old regimes.

My only disappointment with the book is that it did not cover Burma, Thailand, and a few other countries.

Ronald Spector's In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia is a good book that covers much territory and because of that it will always disappoint as there is so much to say. Spector has done a good job to show that there was more to the story of the Pacific War than the surrender of the Japanese and occupation of Japan by the allies. It was a complex story that involved the Allies having often competing agendas all of which were at odds with what the local inhabitants wanted. It was also a story of lost opportunities. What could have General Marshal achieved if he had stayed in China rather than returned to the US for lobbying and consultations? Could the French and Ho Chi Minh really avoided war if the incoming French left-wing government had received Ho's message prior to the Viet Minh launching its attacks.

This book does not cover the whole of the theatre and the Philippines is the most glaring omission given the centrality of the fighting there to the allied strategy. Potentially Spector did not cover it because the country was already in Allied hands when the war finished. Spector is telling more the story of the lands that were outside of allied control at the time of surrender. His detailed descriptions of the initial OSS missions into these areas where the OSS were not sure if they would be shot by the Japanese or shot by a local resistance movement are very interesting. He also highlights the confusion of the British with their involvement in Vietnam and what would become Indonesia, neither of which were British colonies.

Much of the book does reads like an anecdote followed by extrapolation rather than detailed research into official figures to confirm if the anecdotes are correct or only from a specific case. That said, I did like the story about the Japanese officer who defended his armoury from Indonesian revolutionaries for what officials at the time took to be his commitment to law and order but was actually because Japanese rifles had the Emperor's Chrysanthemum on them and he believed that it would dishonour the Emperor to have those weapons fall into the revolutionaries' hands.

The use of the Japanese was a fascinating part of the book. The stories of the Allies joining hands with the recently defeated Japanese to fight shoulder to shoulder against independence movements was a highpoint. As was the story about the British considering recommending a Japanese officer for a medal as a result of one of the engagements.

It is not just a story about the Western Allies, the KMT and Communists are both featured and not just in the chapters on China. The KMT's roll in Vietnam was given reasonable treatment and their view on the French as collaborators again highlighted the internal conflicts of the allies. Spector also provided useful information about the internal politics of the KMT and how that affected what the Chinese did in northern Vietnam.

While the book has some minor surprises, as shown above, there are no major surprises as most readers will be familiar with how things turned out with wars in China, Vietnam, Korea and Indonesia. His remarks about liberating foreign armies are prudent given the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, a foreign liberating army is still foreign.

There seemed to be much left out, including the connections between the OSS and Ho Chi Minh and that is the reason why I have given it only three stars. Although, given the breadth of the subject matter, if Spector had tried to cover everything then it would have been a very long book. Despite that rating I recommend it as a good introduction to what was happening across much of Asia in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. While the endings are well known the stories that engendered them are often forgotten.