In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia. By Ronald H. Spector. (New York: Random House, 2007. xx, 358 pp. $27.95, ISBN 978-0-375-50915-5.)

Abstract

When the Japanese Empire surrendered in 1945, the Allied powers were not only victorious, but also confronted with a whole new set of challenges, ranging from the occupation of Japan to dealing with refugees and former soldiers who needed to be repatriated. In this well-written study, Ronald H. Spector focuses on political and military developments in five countries, formerly part of the Japanese Empire, during 1945–1947. The author shows how American forces in China and Korea, and British forces in Malaya, Indochina, and the Dutch East Indies had to deal with situations that were often beyond their control. A lack of knowledge about the local situation, combined with weak strategic leadership in Washington, D.C., and London allowed old conflicts to continue and new ones to emerge. Few studies have paid attention specifically to the strategic challenges of the whole Asian region in the early post-World War II period and how those conflicts were similar in many respects. As in his excellent earlier study Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan (1985), Spector has done impressive research. For In the Ruins of Empire, he visited archives in six countries, augmenting his extensive reading in the literature. He explains the complicated political and military situation in the five nations studied. In Korea, Malaya, Indochina, and the Dutch East Indies, the American and British forces faced independence movements, while in China, the Nationalists and Communists were entangled in a civil war. Often present with only a small force, the Allied commanders decided in a number of cases to employ defeated Japanese soldiers in an effort to restore order—which did not make the Allies popular among the local population, who had just suffered through a Japanese occupation. In the Dutch East Indies, however, some Japanese forces joined the local insurrection. In Korea and China, American diplomats and soldiers had to deal with a Soviet presence and the beginnings of the Cold War. The British South East Asia Command negotiated with the colonial regimes in the Dutch East Indies and Indochina, for which Spector has little sympathy. In Malaya, the British were the colonial regime themselves.