Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

Daily reminders of American superiority were unavoidable. The most redundant phrase in the defeated land, posted in public places and reiterated in a myriad public and private settings, was Shinchūgun no meirei ni yoru—By order of the Occupation Forces. Petty as well as grand activities were governed by directives from GHQ and encumbered by all the tedious paperwork and micromanagement this entailed. Numerous stores, theaters, hotels, buildings, trains, land areas, and recreational facilities like golf courses were designated “off limits” to Japanese. Ordinary SCAP officers and civilian officials who would have lived plain middle-class lives at home resided in upper-class houses requisitioned from their owners, hardly the most persuasive demonstration of respect for the rights and property of others. There, they might employ three, four, five, or even six servants, all paid for by the Japanese government (cook, “boy,” maid, gardener, nursemaid, and laundress was considered an ideal roster). Bowers, an irrepressible aficionado of Kabuki, managed to obtain two personal cooks, one for Western-style and the other for Japanese-style cuisine. “I and nearly all the Occupation people I knew,” he later mused, “were extremely conceited and extremely arrogant and used our power every inch of the way.”