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U.S. forces occupied Japan for almost seven years after the end of World War II. According to this brief summary of post-war Japanese history from japan-guide.com, the Allied occupation began in August 1945 and formally ended in April 1952. General Douglas MacArthur, who accepted the country's official surrender on the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, directed the operation. During the war, Japan was devastated by massive firebombing campaigns and nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Under the Allied
occupation, the country was demilitarized, and many of its military leaders were punished as war criminals. The Japanese government was democratized, the country's infrastructure rebuilt, and businesses reformed. The 20th-Century Japanese History category in the Yahoo! Directory features a number of helpful sites dedicated to post-war Japan, including this excellent analysis of the occupation from Wesleyan University.
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