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November 12, 2011

[SSJ: 6947] Why did America remove three paragraphs from NSC 13/1?

From: Mark Murata
Date: 2011/11/12

In the years after World War II, the National Security Council wrote a document that contained a set of policy recommendations for how America should deal with Japan.
This document was called NSC 13:
Recommendations With Respect To U.S. Policy Toward Japan. There were three versions of this document. All three versions are nearly identical. However, the second version, NSC 13/2, is missing three paragraphs.
This version was completed on October 7, 1948, which was about two weeks after the original version was compiled.

I want to know why America made those changes. A while back, I asked someone on Twitter, a person whose username is tokyorich, why America made those changes.
He said that America changed the document in reaction to the change in prime ministers (from Hitoshi Ashida to Shigeru Yoshida). That sounds like a plausible explanation to me. But when I asked tokyorich for more information, he refused to elaborate.

So I thought I'd throw the question over to you guys.
Why did America remove those three paragraphs from NSC 13/1? Is it related to the change in prime ministers?
If so, why did the removal of Hitoshi Ashida and the appointment of Shigeru Yoshida lead to the removal of those three paragraphs?

Approved by ssjmod at 02:06 PM