Chart VII (Source: Chart prepared for Colonel John Stanley in Propaganda Branch, G-2.)

With the termination of hostilities, though it was not the juridical finish of the war, both OSS and OWI were swept out of existence. By executive order of 20 September 1945, effective ten days later, OSS was broken up; the scholastic portions were dismembered and reassembled into the Department of State, where they presumably helped collate material for the new interdepartmental Central Intelligence Group (CIG). The operational parts were handed over to the War Department. For all the author knows, some distressed colonel may have a desk full of fountain-pens which explode, transmit radio messages, or can be used for invisible tattooing, along with an edible blotter, a desk telephone which is really a hand grenade and a typewriter which is a demountable motor scooter; such speculations are delightful topics on which to dwell, but the day of black propaganda is over. Obsolescence reduces all things, even OSS, to absurdity.

The OWI perished a more lingering administrative death. It was transferred to the Department of State as an operating unit under the name Interim International Information Service (IIIS) and a new Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. William Benton, took over its sponsorship. Later, under the abbreviation OIC (Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs), it was coordinated on January 1, 1946, with preexisting State department offices and with certain leftovers from the Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA). It retained the global broadcasts on a limited budget; it still served the surviving outposts, which were being integrated with diplomatic and consular offices overseas; and for Korea, Japan, Germany, Austria, and Venezia Giulia, it acted as the supplying service for the Military Government information programs in those areas. The Bureau of the Budget took over limited domestic functions when the OWI passed out of independent existence on 31 August 1945.

The Joho Kyoku.

Chart VIII (Source: Chart prepared before VJ-day in Propaganda Branch, G-2.)

The only aspect of psychological warfare that does not show on the chart is the Japanese political warfare system—by the test of success, the best developed by any belligerent during World War II. The Japanese very early learned the simple rule: Political warfare cannot convert a sub-subsistence economy and government into a satisfactory system, but political warfare can convert a subsisting area into one that has the illusions of prosperity and national freedom. To succeed in the face of economic difficulty, political warfare must be shrewd, simple, insistent, and backed up with a touch of terror. The Japanese moved into the Western colonial areas of the Far East between 1940 and 1942 (Indo-China, Malaya, Indonesia, the Philippines, parts of China, Burma, and areas inhabited by substantial Indian minorities). They organized the following "independent" governments:

These Japanese-sponsored governments flew their own flags, had enough troops to help Japan police their home areas, developed psychological warfare facilities with intensive Japanese assistance, and went through all the motions of independence. In 1944, some of them even held an international conference at Tokyo, thanking Japan for liberating all the non-White States and adopting high-sounding resolutions. (The Siamese puppet ambassador to this meeting had the unforgettable name of His Excellency, the Honorable Witchit Witchit Watakan!)