Wow have the tables turned since 1946. It has been almost a complete reversal. Even from the mid 1990s, some rich Japanese women were (and while hiding it from their parents) streaming to US military bases in Japan and practically "buying" American GIs, who had 1/10th the dollars in their wallets that the Japanese girls had in Yen in their purses...a 'hot' item were African-American GIs. It was like a reverse sugar daddy phenomenon...these American guys tooling around Tokyo in the finest of clothes, driving rich cars, that were essentially given to them by these Japanese women. It is a long way from 1946, where some of those destitute Japanese girls came to the docks out of sheer economic necessity to get out of devastated and impoverished Japan. Now, when you go on many US military bases, it seems like you are walking into a state of poverty from what Japanese life beyond the base is like. I can't hardly think of any cases of Japanse women trying to get out of Japan for economic reasons these days, to America. Japan certainly is not the Philippines, and it certainly is not 1946.
You are exactly right - mostly what I saw was dirt and rubble and pigs wondering down the streets and trucks using charcoal for fuel.
In that desperate situation one certainly couldn't blame the little Japanese lass and as young as I was at the time, I fully understood it wasn't "love at first sight."