From the reviews…
“Barnes’ engaging intellectual and social history of the planners provides a fresh window into the origins of today’s liberal international order.” -Foreign Affairs
“Architects of Occupation skillfully weaves diverse voices into a complex narrative that instructs on the wartime planning for Japan’s postwar occupation.” -Pacific Affairs
“Offers a fascinating glimpse into the policy-making process…. Barnes’s book examines wartime planning in the years leading up to Japan’s surrender. As Barnes explains in the conclusion, her book serves as a ‘prologue to occupation histories.’ But the book is much more than a prologue; it is a captivating testament to the power of ideas in foreign-policy making.” -American Historical Review
Recent events, from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan to protests over American bases in Japan to increasingly aggressive territorial disputes between Asian nations over islands in the Pacific, have brought attention back to the subject of the occupation of Japan. In Architects of Occupation, Dayna L. Barnes exposes the wartime origins of occupation policy and broader plans for postwar Japan. She considers the role of presidents, bureaucrats, think tanks, the media, and Congress in policymaking. Members of these elite groups came together in an informal policy network that shaped planning. Barnes uses letters, memoirs, diaries, and manuscripts written by policymakers to trace the rise and spread of ideas across the policy network. The book contributes a new facet to the substantial literature on the occupation, serves as a case study in foreign policy analysis, and tells a surprising new story about World War II.
Find it at Cornell University Press or Amazon.