Shortly after the occupation began, Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson formulated this vision in blunt terms. The goal of the occupation, he stated, was to ensure that “the present economic and social system in Japan which makes for a will to war will be changed so that the will to war will not continue.”15 This bumpy, redundantly will-full prose succinctly conveyed the Americans’ crusading sense of purpose, as did the plain metaphors with which the reformers routinely described their mission. It became commonplace to speak of rooting out the sources of aggression.
