Before Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed at a small airstrip outside Tokyo to begin the U.S.-led Occupation of Japan in 1945, Americans were the object of intense hatred, portrayed by propagandists as rapacious foreign devils.
A half century later, they are Japan's closest allies.
As the United States looks toward the reconstruction of Iraq, it faces a similar history of resentment and distrust from a nation whose leadership it crushed.