Fascinating for students of world history and military history

There is so little known about immediate post-war Japan because little has been written or filmed and few people cared to know. For most Americans who even bother to know something, WWII ends in 1945 and five years later, the U.S. is involved in the Korean War.

The five years spanning late 1945 to 1951, when Japan signed the Treaty of San Francisco, formally restoring normal peacetime relations between Japan and the U.S. which also recognized Japan's sovereignty and ended U.S. occupation - are full of events. By the end 1947, McArthur's administration of Japan had cleared away the debris of wartime destruction and Tokyo started looking like its pre-war self.

You'll find this amusing. Just at the end of the war in late 1945, Japanese government officials were worried about the prospect of American G.I.s raping Japanese girls and women everywhere. It seems the Japanese considered the Americans might be just as capable of bestial conduct as their own soldiers had been several years earlier. The Japanese authorities in a remarkable short amount of time organized a large pool of prostitutes to service the young American men as they came ashore to occupy Japan. It didn't go without some complaint as reportedly some of the Japanese prostitutes balked at having to give themselves over to men who were the enemy just a short time ago. But the plan worked. During the first day or so of the American occupation in Tokyo, American military police had to be called out to control the large crowds and long lines of American G.I.s who had quickly discovered the local brothels still standing in bombed-out Tokyo. I wonder what kind of currency was being used? Well, business is business and when money talks, sex walks.

I read this in a Borders bookstore in the section on Japan where an interesting book had been recently published detailing post-war Japan in the late 40s to early 50s.