[awkwarddaturtle]

> The Allied Powers had seemingly learned the lessons of Versailles and didn't try to punish the losers (well, not as much), instead letting them grow.

This was true for Germany but not for japan. Due to hard feelings over ww2 and of course racial animosity/hatred, our plan for japan was deindustrialization. We wanted japan to be at least a few decades behind the US and turn more of their nation into docile agrarian farmers. We also instituted starvation policy to thin out and subjugate the japanese. There was rampant starvation in japan in the first few years after ww2.

We had troops specifically assigned to destroy japanese industrial/engineering/science capacity. One of the most famous was the destruction of japan's cyclotron.

https://youtu.be/hJRxchhBbNQ

Keep in mind that we were an extremely racist nation 70 years ago and we had just nuked and firebombed japan into complete rubble. Whereas germans were "our white aryan brothers" ( it's absurd to think it now, but that's how the leaders of the US thought back then ) and we felt an obligation to rehabilitate them, the japanese were viewed as inferior asians with plenty of motive to attack the US again.

The only reason japan was allowed to reindustrialize was the soviet threat and the korean war. We needed japan to help seal off the soviets, chinese and north koreans.

It's fascinating stuff. If the communist threat didn't exist and the korean war never occurred, japan might be a more agrarian society today controlled by the US administrators.

[emodendroket]

There was a Japan faction and a China faction who each wanted their respective countries to be the center of US Asia policy and the China faction lost.