Abstract
This comment on Leon Hollerman's stimulating article on international economic controls adopted during the Occupation of Japan focuses on his thesis that a contradiction existed between SCAP's professed policy and its actions. After a brief discussion of some problems of Occupation research and the need to integrate the period more fully into Japanese and American history, the comment attempts not to challenge Hollerman's thesis but to explore it in other spheres of SCAP's activities. It is argued that the inconsistency noted by Hollerman ran through many Occupation reform policies, and that its origins are to be found in the sharp divergence of views among American policy makers in the summer of 1945 concerning pre-war Japan and Japanese militarism, and different assumptions about the extent of change necessary to achieve American objectives in the postwar period.
