Beneath the Eagle's Wings: Americans in Occupied Japan

"The greatest exercise in peacetime diplomacy in American history," one observer said of the occupation of Japan which followed World War II. The purpose of this immense American enterprise was to destroy both the ability and the desire of the Japanese ever to make war again. Never before had one technologically advanced nation attempted to change another technologically advanced nation in such profound fashion. From the roistering GI spending a few days on "R & R" leave at some mountain hot spring resort to the earnest civilian bureaucrat in his downtown Tokyo office instructing the Japanese on how to reform their government and society, probably two million Americans visited Japan during the period of the Occupation (1945- 1952), shaping the experience and being shaped by it. The Americans proved to be magnanimous winners; equally important, the Japanese were cheerful and acquiescent losers. American ethnocentrism and American ignorance of Japan were largely forgiven by the Japanese who perceived an underlying sincerity and a good intention within the Americans among them. Despite every reason why the Americans should have failed in Japan, they did not. This book is the story of their success.