Japan During World War II

A busy street in Hiroshima before the atomic bombing.

US NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION

At the outbreak of World War II, Japan’s population had reached approximately 72 million people in a country roughly the size of California. Having expanded by almost 20 million people since 1920, when the first official census was taken, the Japanese people lived in a mix of dense urban centers and rural farmland. Tokyo, the capital, was home to approximately 6.7 million people, followed by Osaka with 3.2 million people, and Nagoya with 1.3 million. At the start of the war, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were home to 345,000 and 250,000 people respectively. 

By December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Japanese people had already been accustomed to three years of a regional war, begun by the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. The Empire of Japan during this period stretched throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific for thousands of miles in all directions. The country formally entered World War II on September 22, 1940 with the invasion of French Indochina and officially formed an alliance with Germany and Italy five days later. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the following year was the catalyst for the United States’ entrance into the war. 

During the war, more than 1 million Japanese children were evacuated from cities to the relative safety of the countryside, splitting up families in the process. Rationing and food shortages were rampant throughout the country, beginning as early as 1940.  Although official estimates are unclear, by the end of the war in 1945 approximately three percent of the Japanese population, more than 2 million people, had died.

Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender on August 14, 1945, one week after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which claimed more than 200,000 lives. The survivors of the bombings, named Hibakusha (roughly translated to “person affected by the bomb”), endured years of discrimination in Japan, primarily due to misconceptions about the effects of radiation exposure. Many Hibakusha were forced to live in genbaku suramu (“atomic slums”) and were often blacklisted in terms of employment and marriage prospects. It was not until the late 1950s that the Japanese government adopted reforms to assist Hibakusha, though discrimination continued for decades after.

The Japanese formally signed the surrender on September 2, 1945 and the United States occupied the country for seven years until 1952. To this day over one million Japanese war dead remain unaccounted for.