Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

It would be difficult to exaggerate the material as well as psychological ramifications of requiring the Japanese to contribute in a major way to the maintenance of the occupation army. While some 3.7 million families still lacked housing of their own as of 1948, the government was required to direct a substantial portion of its annual budget to providing housing and facilities for the conquerors—and, indeed, ensuring that these met American living standards. While war widows begged to little avail for relief, the government had no choice but to pay the expenses of, say, an American officer who desired to “modernize” the private residence requisitioned for him by upgrading the electricity and plumbing, painting the interior, introducing modern appliances (phones, stoves, and toilets), and perhaps converting the garden pond into a swimming pool.52 While the unbearable press of passengers on the national railways was dramatized by the suffocation, in December 1945, of an infant strapped to its mother’s back, the government was required to run special cars or even “exclusive occupation army trains,” often nowhere near full, for the free use of occupation personnel. Few Americans gave any thought to such “costs of occupation,” but they were readily apparent to many Japanese.