American Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952
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General Douglas MacArthur was appointed Supreme Commander of Occupational Forces in Japan. MacArthur's mission: demilitarization and democratization. Japan's armed forces and military industry were dismantled. Under a new American-style constitution, the emperor's subjects became citizens. Women were granted equal rights, including suffrage. Legislation was passed to break up monopolies and decentralize giant business corporations. "An agrarian land reform was initiated that within a few years would virtually dispossess the rural landlord class, destroying a system in which exploitative tenancy had been wide-spread and creating in its place a huge constituency of small owner-farmers." ~John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999), 82. |
Photo: Life Magazine, September 17, 1945.
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