General George C. Marshall s mediation effort is well reported, and an extensive list of sketches of leading personalities is updated to December 1945. Besides the draft treaties and frequent situation reports, there are informative travel reports from Shanghai, Tsingtao, Sinkiang, Peiping, and Tientsin. British representatives in occupied Japan necessarily took a back seat to General Douglas MacArthur, but they conscientiously reported on the events and issues of this transitional year. They reported on serious food shortages, Communist and other propaganda and politics, the occupation court system, and war crimes trials. Officials were interested in Japanese treatment of aliens and, of course, the largely American efforts to write a constitution, which was promulgated by the emperor in the fall.
Appendixes deal at greater length with the Japanese war crimes trials and reparation issues.
Britain s diplomats were far more actively engaged in the affairs of two newly emerging states, Siam and the Netherlands East Indies. In the latter, Sir A. Clark Kerr began early in the year to mediate between the Dutch and the Indonesian nationalists, who had proclaimed independence the year before. Draft treaties circulated and condition reports multiplied. It was still in turmoil after the Japanese occupation, and now had French soldiers occupying eastern sections on behalf of Laotian and Cambodian claimants. Its king returned only to be assassinated in June after opening the legislature under a new constitution.