Japan, following WW2, was a basket case. A large population but little resources (why Japan started the wars)! If it had not been for MacArthur and Korea, it might have taken longer, but both happened and Japan became a miracle in recovery!
Most of history remembers MacArthur as ‘Dugout Doug’ and the cranky Army General bent on redeeming his promise to the Philippines. Or they remember the mad General who was replaced by the practical Truman when MacArthur wanted to nuke the Korean Border with Red China. What is forgot for the most part is the Shogun MacArthur who pacified and rebuilt Japan between 1945-50. While highly imperfect, MacArthur broke many of the Zaibatsu and the feudal land / agricultural monopolies that worked with the military to control pre-war Japan.
Indeed the changes might have continued if the Soviet Union had been less aggressive and the Red China take-over had not forced the US to encourage a strengthened Japan. Still, the MacArthur Shogunate did much to change Japan from a re-feudalized fascist state to an active democratized polity.
But one thing left unchanged is the rather rampant xenophobia that appears inherit to Japanese and other east asian cultures. The Japanese Nation has their own oppressed indigenous aborigines in the Ainu who were native hunter-gatherers on the norther islands before the influx of the ethnic Japanese (Yamato-jin).
After the WW2 defeat, there were the inevitable relations between impoverished women and the RICH conquerors of the US and the offspring thereof. In male-dominated Japan, such relations were viciously attacked and many suffered and others died. This man’s mother was able to find a better outcome and is to admired for it!
Great history and happy outcome. We, by our LEFTist Masters, are being force-fed a false history of how we are the most racist and hated culture. In reality, we have absorbed ever so many people and cultures that the rest of the world would have mostly expelled or killed. Yet this palpable fact is buried by a LEFT that hates it!
My Dad joked to me the first time I went to Japan on business.
“ If you meet any red headed Japanese girls, say hello to your sister”. He was a sailor on the APA Calvert during the Korean war. Evidently Japan was Disneyland for adults at that time.
Half-caste Japanese are treated little better today than they were decades ago. Even native Japanese who work overseas for “too long” become outcast as “not Japanese enough” when they return.
But all the ethnic Asian groups are like that. The Vietnamese vs the Montagnards for example. Or the Han Chinese vs everyone. What they call racism in America today is a bad joke compared to Asia. Or Central/South America. In LA where I was raised the tension between Whites and Blacks was minor compared to Blacks vs Mexicans. That is still true.
In my limited experience Whites tend to be the least exclusionary of all.
On the other hand he was often brilliant and I don't think a more humble man would have done as well in Japan following WWII. Japan had a god-emperor once again to guide them. And, as a nation, that was what they needed at the time.