Gordon Tullock read an account of a visit by Japanese veterans to Malaya:
The American reporter was astounded at the statements by these veterans that they had liberated Malaya. In fact, the native populations generally greeted the Japanese with enthusiasm, although the Chinese immigrants didn’t like them because of the invasion of China. They set up governments that the American press referred to as puppets, and which were certainly, not completely self-governing, but the natives were certainly more in control of the government than they had been under the former empires.
Consider the situation in France, Belgium and Italy when large allied forces were present. The local governments had varying amounts of autonomy ranging from France, where DeGaulle was hard to control to Italy where the Royal government was quite weak. The same could be said in the territories to their south occupied by Japan. In general, the governments that we regarded as puppets seem to have been accepted. After the war the leaders of these governments were not punished by the natives, and in most cases remained in or returned to power, which is fairly good proof that they were not regarded locally as merely puppets.
Long after the war, when these countries discovered that they could get funds out of Japan by complaining, the history of the wartime period was revised. Japan paid some reparations, possibly in part because the industries providing the exports to that area wanted them.
A lot luckier than the leaders of wartime Croatia and Slovakia! At the end of the Cold War, many in the West were astonished to discover that those governments still retained a lot of popularity among, respectively, the Croats and Slovaks.
Who writes these articles, if I may ask? They are very good!
AUS — They’re written by Gordon Tullock, the late economist, and I agree, his observations are damned interesting. Succinct, too.