British Commonwealth Occupation Force
The British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) was the British Commonwealth taskforce consisting of Australian, British, Indian and New Zealand military forces in occupied Japan, from 1946 until the end of occupation in 1952.
Commander Yuzo Tanno hands over the keys of the Yokosuka Naval Base to Captain H. J. Buchanan, Royal Australian Navy on 30 August 1945.
General Robert L. Eichelberger inspects Australian Guard of Honour at Kure.
Major General David Cowan, General Officer Commanding BRINDIV, inspects Indian troops at Kure, 30 March 1946.
2nd Battalion, 5th Gurkha Rifles marches through Kure, May 1946.
Japan was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II from the surrender of the Empire of Japan on September 2, 1945, at the war's end until the Treaty of San Francisco took effect on April 28, 1952. The occupation, led by the American military with support from the British Commonwealth and under the supervision of the Far Eastern Commission, involved a total of nearly one million Allied soldiers. The occupation was overseen by the US General Douglas MacArthur, who was appointed Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers by the US President Harry S. Truman; MacArthur was succeeded as supreme commander by General Matthew Ridgway in 1951. Unlike in the occupations of Germany and Austria, the Soviet Union had little to no influence in Japan, declining to participate because it did not want to place Soviet troops under MacArthur's direct command. And unlike Germany, the Japanese government still remained in place throughout the occupation.
May 1946: The Indian Army 2nd Battalion 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles march through Kure, Hiroshima soon after their arrival in Japan.
Nihonbashi, Tokyo, in 1946
Gaetano Faillace's famous photo of Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito
The Japanese government releases members of the Japanese Communist Party on October 10, 1945.