Aftermath of War: Americans and the Remaking of Japan

With the fighting in World War II over in mid-August 1945, more than one-half million American troops moved to occupy Japan. Much of the country was ruined, buried under the rubble and debris of saturation bombing and the atomic blasts over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan’s rulers were stunned by defeat, and its people resigned to whatever the victors might impose upon them. Aftermath of War described the American transformation of Occupied Japan to be the greatest success story of United Sta...