Not to be confused with Red Terror or Great Purge.
Red Purge
Part of the "Reverse Course" under the Allied Occupation of Japan
Location
Japan
Date
1948–1952
Target
Communists, suspected communists, suspected communist sympathizers, leftists
Attack type
Mass firings
Dismissals from government posts
Bans on political activity
Victims
27,000+
Perpetrators
Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP)
Government of Japan
Japanese corporations
Japanese universities
Motive
Rising Cold War tensions
Postwar Red Scare
Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War
Outbreak of the Korean War
The Red Purge (Japanese: レッドパージ; reddo pāji) was an anticommunist movement in occupied Japan from the late 1940s to the early 1950s.[1][2][3] Carried out by the Japanese government and private corporations with the aid and encouragement of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), the Red Purge saw tens of thousands of alleged members, supporters, or sympathizers of left-wing groups, especially those said to be affiliated with the Japanese Communist Party, removed from their jobs in government, the private sector, universities, and schools.[4] The Red Purge emerged from rising Cold War tensions and the Red Scare after World War II,[5][6] and was a significant element within a broader "Reverse Course" in Occupation policies.[7] The Red Purge reached a peak following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950,[7] began to ease after General Douglas MacArthur was replaced as commander of the Occupation by General Matthew Ridgway in 1951, and came to a final conclusion with the end of the Occupation in 1952.
^Kumano 2010, p. 513: "The notorious "Red Purge" was instituted nationwide in the final phase of the occupation, from July 1947 to March 1951, and proved to be a critical test for the survival of academic freedom."
^Dower & Tetsuo 2007, p. 3: "The Red Purge was a series of arbitrary layoffs by government agencies and corporations aimed at heavy-handedly eliminating from the workplace those workers who had been unilaterally branded 'Red'. [...] The purge occurred during the US occupation of Japan from 1949 to 1951."
^Kingston 2011, p. 13: "From 1947, the Japanese government, supported by MacArthur, unleashed a Red Purge that targeted those Japanese considered to have left-wing views."
^Kapur 2018, p. 10.
^Kumano 2010, p. 514: "Eells's anticommunist speeches echoed America's Cold War policy [...] during the ideological struggle of the Cold War."
^Kumano 2010, p. 529: "Since Eells's address in July 1949, the dilemma over communist teachers had become a national obsession, verging in some quarters on hysteria."
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