For journalists, and later for historians as well, what the Americans would do to the Japanese was the story of most compelling interest. Until recently, it has been difficult to imagine the occupation as an “embrace,” or to consider what effect the losers might have had on the victors and their agendas, or how that “American interlude” might have reinforced rather than altered tendencies within the defeated country. It has been difficult, certainly for outsiders, to grasp the defeat and occupation as a lived Japanese experience.
