The Hodge–Kozuki Correspondence and Japan's Postwar Revival in "Liberated" Korea

On September 1, 1945, just over two weeks after the Japanese emperor made his famous surrender speech over NHK radio, Lieutenant General Kozuki Yoshio, Commanding Officer of the Seventeenth Japanese Army in Korea, established contact with U.S. Lieutenant General John Hodge, Commanding Officer of the XXIV Corps, remained in Okinawa but soon traveled to Seoul to direct the United States occupation of southern Korea. He had just learned that he would surrender to the U.S., rather than to the Soviet, armies. As Soviet troops were quickly advancing south from the Manchurian border, Kozuki informed Hodge that "there are Communist agitators among the Koreans who are plotting to take advantage of the situation to disturb the peace and order here." Fearing a possibility that this ideology may come to dominate southern Korean politics, Hodge directed the Japanese to maintain control over the peninsula until U.S. forces arrived. This was one of a number of clues that Japan would be positioned by the United States to again maintain a position of influence in the Northeast Asian region. This paper argues that U.S. attitudes toward the enemy Japanese began to soften as its relations with its ally turned enemy, the Soviet Union, hardened, even as the battles waged in the Pacific War. Japan's importance as a future belligerent in a possible future confrontation with the Soviet Union and the territory it would soon occupy in northern Korea?