Not Presently Sufficient

Article 14 of the treaty that ended the Second World War in the Pacific begins by conceding the obvious.

It is recognized, it says, that Japan should pay reparations to the Allied Powers for the damage and suffering caused by it during the war. Then, without a full stop in between, it takes it back. Nevertheless it is also recognized that the resources of Japan are not presently sufficient, if it is to maintain a viable economy, to make complete reparation for all such damage and suffering and at the same time meet its other obligations.

Both halves are in the same sentence. The debt is acknowledged and written off in a single breath.

What was on offer instead

Having said that money was not available, the article sets out what was. Japan would negotiate with any Allied power whose territory it had occupied and damaged, with a view to compensating the cost of repairs by making available the services of the Japanese people in production, salvaging and other work.

Not payment. Labour, and the output of factories, supplied to the countries Japan had occupied, and negotiated one at a time afterwards.

The room

Forty nine nations signed at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco on 8 September 1951, forty eight Allied powers and Japan. Fifty one had come. The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland attended and refused to sign, which is why the photograph of Dean Acheson bent over the document has a name board reading Czechoslovakia standing a few feet from him in an empty aisle.

India's board was not there to be empty, because India had already said it would not come.

The letter from Delhi

The reasoning is in Jawaharlal Nehru's own correspondence, and it is not about money.

On 23 July 1951 he wrote to M. A. Rauf, India's ambassador in Burma, that signing the proposed treaty would practically mean giving up the position India had taken in foreign policy since independence. "It means lining up with the USA in world politics," he wrote. "It means accepting American troops and bases in Japan."

That was the objection. India's government held that the terms should give Japan a position of honour, equality and contentment among free nations, and the draft did not. It permitted foreign forces to remain on Japanese soil under later agreements, which India read as a condition attached to Japan's independence rather than a choice an independent Japan might make afterwards. India put its changes to Washington formally on 28 July and expected them to be refused. They were. On 13 August, Nehru told Rauf that India would not go.

India also tried not to do it alone. Burma's foreign minister, Sao Hkun Hkio, came to Delhi at the end of July carrying an idea from U Nu: a conference of the foreign ministers of Burma, India and Indonesia. Nehru welcomed it and suggested it be held after the signing in San Francisco rather than before, so the three could settle their positions and perhaps propose jointly that Japan sign simple individual peace treaties with each of them, without any other commitments attached. He was less confident about Indonesia following India's lead, and said so in a cable to Sukarno.

There is a detail in that letter worth keeping. Nehru had heard from Tokyo that India's position, though never announced, had become well known in Japan, and that the editor of one of the largest Japanese newspapers had privately said he wished he had started a campaign along the same lines.

What India had already paid

India did have a claim. Japanese forces had bombed the north east, and India had compensated the people there out of its own budget, a sum of four to five million dollars, roughly forty to fifty lakh rupees at the time. The damage in that region had been caused partly by Japanese action and partly by Anglo-American forces, and India paid for both.

By July 1951 it had decided not to press for any of it back. The damage, set against the war as a whole, had been relatively minor. And there was the European precedent: enormous reparations had been imposed on Germany after the First World War, barely any of it had ever been paid, and the demand itself had become a permanent source of grievance that a later German government simply repudiated.

That was the calculation. Not generosity, and not forgetting. A judgement that a bill nobody can pay does more damage than no bill at all.

On Burma, India took a different line for somebody else. Burma's claim was substantial, and when U Nu wrote to him on 20 July, Nehru replied four days later that India entirely agreed the Burmese case for compensation was very strong. India would not ask for its own money and would support Burma asking for theirs.

The separate peace

Japan and India signed their own treaty of peace on 9 June 1952, six weeks after the San Francisco treaty entered into force and the occupation formally ended. It was short, it ended the state of war without qualifications or attached commitments, and India waived all claims to reparation.

India was among the first Asian countries to open diplomatic relations with Tokyo afterwards.

What the sentence turned into

The bilateral negotiations that Article 14 provided for took years and did eventually produce money as well as services. The Philippines settled at 550 million dollars. Indonesia at just over 223 million. Burma, whose claim Nehru had backed, at 200 million.

Those are not small sums, and they are not the sums that would have been demanded had the article not contained its second half. The drafters wrote down what Japan owed, wrote down that it could not pay, and left every country to work out for itself what to do with a debt formally acknowledged and formally uncollectable.

India worked it out in the summer of 1951, in letters between a prime minister and an ambassador, and its answer was to pay its own bombed villagers and ask Tokyo for nothing.

Sources

• Treaty of Peace with Japan, "Text of the treaty signed at San Francisco, 8 September 1951" (Article 14(a) recognising that Japan should pay reparations and that the resources of Japan are not presently sufficient to make complete reparation while maintaining a viable economy and meeting its other obligations; Article 14(a)1 providing for negotiations with occupied and damaged Allied powers to compensate the cost of repairing damage by making available the services of the Japanese people in production, salvaging and other work; the date of signature of 8 September 1951 and entry into force on 28 April 1952).
• Monika Chansoria, The Japan Institute of International Affairs, "India's Refusal to Sign the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty: Revisiting the Motivations of the Decision and of Historical Reconciliation towards Japan", Policy Brief, 2 June 2023 (India declining to attend on the ground that the draft limited Japanese sovereignty; Nehru's letter to Ambassador M. A. Rauf of 23 July 1951 that signing would mean lining up with the USA in world politics and accepting American troops and bases in Japan, cited to the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru; India's position that the terms should concede Japan a position of honour, equality and contentment among the community of free nations; the formal Indian reply to the United States of 28 July 1951 and the objection to Article 6(a) on the retention of foreign armed forces; Nehru's letter of 13 August 1951 confirming India would not attend, and the report from Tokyo that a Japanese newspaper editor privately welcomed India's stand; India's decision by July 1951 not to press for reparations because the damage to India was relatively minor and because the German precedent after the First World War showed such demands were rarely realised and became a source of continuous irritation; the compensation of four to five million dollars, approximately forty to fifty lakh rupees, that India had already paid to the people of the north east for damage caused partly by Japanese and partly by Anglo-American forces; Nehru's reply to U Nu of 24 July 1951 that India entirely agreed Burma's claim for compensation was very strong; and the visit of Burmese foreign minister Sao Hkun Hkio to New Delhi, the proposal for a conference of the foreign ministers of Burma, India and Indonesia, Nehru's suggestion that it follow rather than precede the San Francisco signing so the three might jointly suggest simple individual treaties without other commitments, and his doubts about Indonesia conveyed in a cable to President Sukarno).
• Wikipedia, "Treaty of San Francisco" (the signature by forty nine nations at the War Memorial Opera House, being forty eight Allied powers and Japan; that of the fifty one countries taking part the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland declined to sign; and the reparations eventually settled bilaterally at 550 million dollars for the Philippines, 223.08 million for Indonesia and 200 million for Burma).
• Wikipedia, "Treaty of Peace Between Japan and India" (the signature of the separate India Japan peace treaty on 9 June 1952 and the waiver by India of all wartime claims and reparations against Japan).