I’m trying to wrap my head around how the USA and Japan shifted from being fierce enemies during World War II to becoming close allies in just a few decades. It seems like a huge turnaround in international relations from an American perspective. What happened and why this dramatic change?
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After the US won the war the nationalists unexpectedly lost the Civil War in China and the US needed a base of operations in East Asia, most notably to fight the Korean War. Japanese companies like Toyota made tons of money supplying the US military with goods and services and this kickstarted the Japanese economy. After that point the Japanese elites saw they had common cause with the US and the Americans saw Japan as a stable next best option to running Asian operations out of China.
There are other factors that helped but this was the most important one that ensured the US-Japan relationship became so solidly cooperative after the war. There was no Marshall Plan for Asia and until China went Communist the US occupation authorities were still considering stripping Japan of industrial equipment as a punitive measure for the war to make sure it was too poor to cause problems for them. The Korean War was basically the Marshall Plan for the Japanese.
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