When American occupation forces landed in the Tokyo-Yokohama area after Japan’s surrender in August 1945, they found only smokestacks and large steel safes standing amid miles of rubble in what had been the heart of industrial Japan. Japan, like Germany, was formally occupied by all the Allies, but real power resided in American hands. U.S. general Douglas MacArthur exercised almost absolute authority. MacArthur and the Americans had a revolutionary plan for defeated Japan, introducing reforms designed to make Japan a free, democratic society along American lines.

Japan’s sweeping American revolution began with demilitarization and a systematic purge of convicted war criminals and wartime collaborators. The American-dictated constitution of 1946 allowed the emperor to remain the “symbol of the State.” Real power resided in the Japanese Diet, whose members were popularly elected. A bill of rights granted basic civil liberties and freed all political prisoners, including Communists. Article 9 of the new constitution abolished the Japanese armed forces and renounced war. The American occupation left Japan’s powerful bureaucracy largely intact and used it to implement fundamental social and economic reforms. The occupation promoted the Japanese labor movement, introduced American-style antitrust laws, and “emancipated” Japanese women, granting them equality before the law. The occupation also imposed revolutionary land reform that strengthened the small independent farmers who became staunch defenders of post war democracy.

America’s efforts to remake Japan in its own image were powerful but short-lived. As Mao’s forces prevailed in China, American leaders began to see Japan as a potential ally, not as an object of social reform. The American command began purging leftists and rehabilitating prewar nationalists. The Japanese prime minister during much of the occupation and early post-occupation period was Shigeru Yoshida. Yoshida had served as Japanese ambassador to Italy and the United Kingdom; with his pro-British and pro-American sympathies, he was the ideal leader in Western eyes for post war Japan. He channeled all available resources to the rebuilding of Japan’s industrial infrastructure, while he left the military defense of the country to the American occupying forces.

The occupation ended in 1952. Under the treaty terms Japan regained independence, and the United States retained its vast military complex in Japan. Japan became the chief Asian ally of the United States in its efforts to contain the spread of communism in East Asia.