Loxd4
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Loxd4 said:After WWII we rebuild Germany and Japan, right? Ok, after the rebuilds ion was complete why was Germany allowed to have a military while Japan was not? Can anyone tell me this answer and give me some evidence to back it up please?
Loxd4 said:After WWII we rebuild Germany and Japan, right? Ok, after the rebuilds ion was complete why was Germany allowed to have a military while Japan was not? Can anyone tell me this answer and give me some evidence to back it up please?
M14 Shooter said:Japan has a military. Its budget is constitutionally limited to 1% of its GDP. We are bound by treaty to do whatever we can to defend the Japanese.
Germany was indeed 'allowed' a military because of the Soviet threat, and as far as I know, there is no constitutional limit on its size.
t125eagle said:also, other facts could be factors in that too. one was that Germany was split into different zones and eventually into 2 seperate countries, with the one in the west being democratic and the one in the east being communist.
with regards to Japan, remember that they bombed Pearl Harbor so the limiting of the military could have been due, in part, because of that fact.
The military had a good amount of control over the Japanese government at WWII, and there was a fair amount of corruption. I think that there was a world wide feeling that everyone should have a smaller military, and Japan had been a main aggressor in WWII, so the size of the army was limited.with regards to Japan, remember that they bombed Pearl Harbor so the limiting of the military could have been due, in part, because of that fact.
Adenauer's decision to turn down the Soviet proposal was convincing evidence that the FRG intended to remain firmly anchored in the Western defense community. After plans for the EDC had failed because of the French veto, negotiations were successfully concluded on the Treaties of Paris in May 1954, which ended the Occupation Statute and made the FRG a member of the Western European Union and of NATO. On May 5, 1955, the FRG declared its sovereignty as a country and, as a new member of NATO, undertook to contribute to the organization's defense effort by building up its own armed forces, the Bundeswehr.
The FRG contributed to NATO's defense effort by building up the Bundeswehr, an undertaking that met with considerable opposition within the population. For many, the memories of the war were still too vivid. To avoid separating the army from the country's civilian and political life, as was the case during the Weimar Republic, laws were passed that guaranteed civilian control over the armed forces and gave the individual soldier a new status. Members of the conscription army were to be "citizens in uniform" and were encouraged to take an active part in democratic politics. Although West Germans generally remained less than enthusiastic about their new army, the majority accepted the responsibility of sharing the burden of defense with the United States and the other members of NATO.
Loxd4 said:After WWII we rebuild Germany and Japan, right? Ok, after the rebuilds ion was complete why was Germany allowed to have a military while Japan was not? Can anyone tell me this answer and give me some evidence to back it up please?
On July 26, 1945, Allied leaders Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, and Joseph Stalin issued the Potsdam Declaration, which demanded Japan's unconditional surrender. This declaration also defined the major goals of the postsurrender Allied occupation: "The Japanese government shall remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people. Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established" (Section 10). In addition, the document stated: "The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government" (Section 12). The Allies sought not merely punishment or reparations from a militaristic foe, but fundamental changes in the nature of its political system. In the words of political scientist Robert E. Ward: "The occupation was perhaps the single most exhaustively planned operation of massive and externally directed political change in world history."
The wording of the Potsdam Declaration--"The Japanese Government shall remove all obstacles..."--and the initial postsurrender measures taken by MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), suggest that neither he nor his superiors in Washington intended to impose a new political system on Japan unilaterally. Instead, they wished to encourage Japan's new leaders to initiate democratic reforms on their own. But by early 1946, MacArthur's staff and Japanese officials were at odds over the most fundamental issue, the writing of a new constitution. Prime Minister Shidehara Kijuro and many of his colleagues were extremely reluctant to take the drastic step of replacing the 1889 Meiji Constitution with a more liberal document. In late 1945, Shidehara appointed Matsumoto Joji, state minister without portfolio, head of a blue-ribbon committee of constitutional scholars to suggest revisions. The Matsumoto Commission's recommendations, made public in February 1946, were quite conservative (described by one Japanese scholar in the late 1980s as "no more than a touching-up of the Meiji Constitution"). MacArthur rejected them outright and ordered his staff to draft a completely new document. This was presented to surprised Japanese officials on February 13, 1946.
The MacArthur draft, which proposed a unicameral legislature, was changed at the insistence of the Japanese to allow a bicameral legislature, both houses being elected. In most other important respects, however, the ideas embodied in the February 13 document were adopted by the government in its own draft proposal of March 6. These included the constitution's most distinctive features: the symbolic role of the emperor, the prominence of guarantees of civil and human rights, and the renunciation of war. The new document was approved by the Privy Council, the House of Peers, and the House of Representatives, the major organs of government in the 1889 constitution, and promulgated on November 3, 1946, to go into effect on May 3, 1947. Technically, the 1947 constitution was an amendment to the 1889 document rather than its abrogation.
Trajan Octavian Titus said:Well actually the U.S. wanted the Japanese to rebuild an army to help in the fight of the expansion of Communism in Asia, however, the Japanese themselves decided to renounce war and built into their Constitution themselves that they would never again have a standing army so as they would never again allow the country to come under the control of the Shogunite and the heavily militarist samurai class. Allthough, they may have amended their Constitution to allow for a military as a defensive measure and that's why they have a small military force now, on that however I'm not to sure about.
Loxd4 said:After WWII we rebuild Germany and Japan, right? Ok, after the rebuilds ion was complete why was Germany allowed to have a military while Japan was not? Can anyone tell me this answer and give me some evidence to back it up please?
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