When was the Treaty of San Francisco signed?
The Treaty of San Francisco was signed on the 8th of September 1951, at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, United States. It came into force on the 28th of April 1952.
Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Treaty of San Francisco was signed on the 8th of September 1951, at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, United States. It came into force on the 28th of April 1952.
China was excluded because the United States and the United Kingdom could not agree on which government represented the Chinese people. The United States recognized the Republic of China on Taiwan, while Britain had recognized the People's Republic of China in 1950. As a compromise, neither was invited.
Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Soviet Union refused to sign. The Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko led his delegation's opposition, arguing the treaty turned Japan into an American military base and violated the Yalta agreement regarding South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.
Ceylon's Finance Minister J.R. Jayewardene declared that his country would not seek reparations from Japan, citing the Buddhist principle that "hatred ceases not by hatred but by love." He called the treaty "as magnanimous as it is just to a defeated foe" and extended Japan the hand of friendship. His speech received a standing ovation.
The treaty required Japan to renounce all rights, title, and claims to Taiwan but did not designate a recipient for the island. U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, a co-author of the treaty, stated in 1955 that Japan had merely renounced sovereignty over Taiwan without transferring it to anyone. This ambiguity gave rise to the Theory of the Undetermined Status of Taiwan.
Japan paid the Philippines the equivalent of $550,000,000, Burma $200,000,000, Indonesia $223,080,000, and South Vietnam $38,000,000 under bilateral agreements made pursuant to Article 14 of the treaty. Japan also paid £4,500,000 to the International Committee of the Red Cross for the benefit of former Allied prisoners of war, under Article 16.