THE HONORABLE CONQUERORS

This study of the Occupation of Japan during 1945-52 is oriented to the human rather than historical detail and is quite absorbing. Aside from straight reporting about the initial occupation, the author singles out a handful of prototype figures whose activities he follows for several years. Among these are Emperor Hirohito, Premier Tojo, MacArthur, and a raft of lesser fry. Sheldon himself spent ten years in occupied Japan and, by a remarkable coincidence, the lengthiest extracts he quotes are from the diary of a Public Information Officer, Capt. Shel Walker, who also has spent ten years there. We follow the postwar life of a pretty Japanese girl who worked for the American PXes, then a Japanese firm, and who married Captain Walker. Hirohito, Tojo and MacArthur are presented with intimate good humor. The Easternization of American troops and the Westernization of the Japanese populace was an act of cross-breeding herein keenly assessed. Japanese homes now exhibit a split personality. Most disarming to male readers will be the culture shock of American wives in Japan, where they discovered something new about femininity.