ABSTRACT
The twin aims of the Allied occupation of Japan were to alter the latter for the better and to fit a reformed nation into an American-designed arc of friendly Asia-Pacific states. Publishers and editors of newspapers, magazines, newsreels, radio stations and photo-journals immediately scrambled to get their men and a few women into Tokyo to report at length on vital events. Overnight war correspondents shed their uniforms and became civilian reporters. The New York Times responded with alacrity to the challenges of making some sort of sense of fast-developing events, knowing full well that its readership was intensely interested in what would become of the occupation. The gradual swing in American opinion towards the support of a less vindictive set of occupation policies may well have rested on positive reportage gleaned from US wire services and Allied correspondents in Tokyo.
