ers 1)The United States disarmed Japan to guarantee its war objective: That Japan never again become a threat to the United States. As one considers how this affected the state of affairs in postwar Asia, however, it could be viewed as a significant mistake. Due to the American fear of the spread of communism, Japan was allowed a limited standing force, beginning in 1953, for defending their homeland. In a speech in Tokyo on November 19, 1953, Vice-President Richard Nixon said:Rearmament of Japan. Now if disarmament was right in 1946, why is it wrong in 1953? And if it was right in 1946 and wrong in 1953, why doesnt the United States admit for once that it made a mistake? And Im going to say something that I think perhaps ought to be done more by people in public life. Im going to admit right here that the United States did make a mistake in 1946. We made a mistake because we misjudged the intention of the Soviet leaders. (Walt 168)Although the United States did well in eliminating any future threats from Japan, it was realized later on that Japan was left in the midst of a violent wave of communism with no means of defense but for the United States which did not wish for a direct war on the Soviets, who backed all communist countries.After disarmament was complete, MacArthurs next task was to see that Japan adopted a new, and democratic, constitution. When the Japanese government proved too confused or too reluctant to write a constitutional reform that satisfied MacArthur, he had his own staff draft a new constitution in February of 1946. This, with only minor changes made to please the conservative groups in Japan, was then adopted by the Japanese government in the form of an imperial amendment to the 1889 constitution. Japans new democracy went into effect on May 3, 1947. The new constitution was a perfection of the British parliamentary form of government that the Japanese had been moving toward in the 1920s. Supreme political pow...
