“Our balance sheet for Japan is drawn neither in red ink alone nor in black ink. It would be a prevision of the truth to deny the changes wrought in Japan. It would be rank pessimism to think that Japan could fight us again in a decade or a generation. Errors have been made and some of them have been corrected. Even as these lines are being written, MacArthur’s experts are working on a plan to end the insidious and concerted violation of our directives. Other experts are adding new, ultra-patriotic bands to our blacklist. Steps are being urgently considered to brake the sliding yen. Day and night, able men in many branches of MacArthur’s headquarters check, study and plan… The answers to these [problems] do not lie in Japan alone. Some of them are in Washington. Some – in your own home.”
Click here to read about August 28, 1945 – the day the occupation began.
