Introduction. Although foreign outsiders in Occupied Japan were overwhelmingly white male military personnel, foreign women had a significant experience and impact in this period. They came in professional, clerical, homemaking, and entertainment capacities and, though primarily American, also included European, Australian, and Asian women. American servicewomen who were sent to Japan were assigned censorship and information duties. Military nurses were on hand to staff service hospitals. Missionaries, single and married, were encouraged by General MacArthur to return to Japan in 1947 to spread Christianity. In addition, American women came to Japan as expert members of short-term missions to advise General MacArthur on policy issues, or they worked for a year or two with the International Red Cross or the United Services Organization. Some came simply to entertain the troops: singers, bandleaders, and movie stars. An occasional women foreign correspondent appeared on the scene, but most of the journalists were male. One or two acted as prosecutors at the war crimes trials. Also on the scene were missionary teachers or wives of Japanese nationals who had long experience abroad and had chosen to remain in wartime Japan and share in its fate.

Department of the Army Civilians. Beginning in January 1946, hundreds of civilian American women, mainly single, were recruited in Washington, D.C., by the Department of the Army for jobs in Japan as Department of the Army Civilians (DACs). Most ended up for a few years as secretaries and clerk-typists in special staff sections in Tokyo or in branch offices in large cities. Japanese American women who had been trapped in Japan during the war also applied for these jobs to earn income and to help ensure retention or restoration of their citizenship and return to the United States. They were valued as translators and interpreters as well as secretaries. A handful of well-educated American women were assigned to leadership positions in the special staff sections of General MacArthur's Supreme Command. Only a few were assigned to Civil Affairs Teams in various prefectures to help monitor compliance with Occupation reforms at local levels.

Special Staff Positions. Among the first civilian foreign women to be admitted to Occupied Japan was twenty-three year old Beate Sirota, a Viennese-born American national and Mills College graduate who had lived with her émigré parents in Japan as a girl and was fluent in spoken Japanese. Assigned to the Government Section (GS), she was appointed in February 1946 to a team of approximately twenty Americans, primarily male, to write in secret a model draft of a new Japanese constitution. Her contribution was the inclusion of equal rights for women. Another assignment was to compile information on Japanese financiers and industrialists who might be eligible for the economic purge. Also in GS at that time was economist Eleanor Hadley, who left her graduate studies at Harvard to work as a wartime researcher in the Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C. She, too, had direct knowledge of Japan and many Japanese friends as a prewar member of the Japan America Student Conference and a year of study in Japan on scholarship. In 1946-47, Hadley backed legislation to dissolve financial combines and to promote free trade. Both women ran afoul of General Charles Willoughby’s search for liberals or pro-Communists as part of his counter-intelligence operations and left the Occupation at an early stage—but not without making a considerable impact. Sirota, married as Beate Gordon, became head of the Performing Arts Division of the Japan Society and Asia Society, New York, and interpreter/translator for important visiting Japanese women. Hadley earned a doctorate from Harvard, and as a professor and civil servant continued a life-long association with Japan. Gloria Stander, a labor specialist, served in the Economic and Scientific Section and helped to draft the Labor Standards Law, 1947, and protective legislation for Japanese working women. Elsewhere, in the Public Health and Welfare Section, Major Grace Alt was appointed Chief of the Nursing Affairs Division and took over duties to improve the organization, education, and status of Japanese nurses. Her successor in 1947, civilian Virginia Mae Ohlson, held a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Chicago and specialized in public health nursing practice and research. Together with Japanese nurses, physicians, and officials, Alt and Ohlson inspected hospitals and nursing schools, set up model training centers, and helped develop the first Japanese National Nursing Law.

In the Civil Information and Education Section (CI&E), Ethel Weed, first as a Women's Army Corps (WAC) lieutenant and later as a civilian, took over as head of women's activities and worked closely with Japanese women throughout most of the Occupation period. She encouraged women to vote and to join political organizations and was a vital presence in revision of the Civil Code to give women full legal rights. Though she had no prior experience of Japan, she took to heart the mission of female emancipation and had a natural talent for working with knowledgeable Japanese on terms of mutual respect. Other women in CI&E made notable contributions to educational reform. Eileen R. Donovan, a WAC captain when she arrived, interacted with high level Japanese educators in implementing reform recommendations and pushed an equal curriculum for male and female students from grades one to twelve. She too was well-trained for her job. A graduate of Boston Teachers College, and holder of a master's degree in public administration from Harvard, she had taught history in Boston public schools, 1937-1943, before joining the WACs. After her Occupation stint ended, she entered the Foreign Service in 1948, one of the first women to become a Foreign Service Officer, and ended her career as ambassador to the Barbados.

More directly involved in expanding women's higher education in Japan was Dr. Lulu Holmes, a graduate of Teachers College, Columbia University. She took leave from her position as Dean of Women at Washington State College, 1946-48, to work as an advisor in CI&E. Back in 1934-35, she had spent a year teaching at the Kobe College for Women, a junior college set up by missionaries and headed by Charlotte DeForest, who was born in Japan (Osaka, 1879) and was fluent in Japanese. Holmes made several tours and encouraged Japanese women to form a Japanese Association of College Women and lobby the public and government to support women's higher education. Largely due to her efforts, five women's junior colleges were elevated to full four-year college level in 1948, including Kobe College. Holmes, uncertain at the end of her stay, that Japanese girls really desired more education, was succeeded by another highly-trained professional, Dr. Helen Hosp, graduate of Goucher College and New York University and a former women's dean at the University of Nebraska. She continued to press for reforms in women's higher education and took a special interest in training for prospective women deans. In an interesting twist, a full college course taught in English at the International College of the Sacred Heart was approved for American women veterans in Japan wishing to attend college under the G.I. Bill of Rights. Dallas Finn, a graduate of Radcliffe and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, joined her lawyer husband, Richard Finn, a Foreign Service Officer and member of the Diplomatic Section, in mid-Occupation. As a young housewife and mother in Japan, she also taught at a Japanese school and wrote articles evaluating Japanese educational reform. Subsequently, she would investigate Japan's preservation policies for Victorian and modern style buildings and publish a monumental book on architecture in Meiji Japan.

Consultants and Experts. American women served the cause of educational reform in many other capacities. Four women served as members of the First Education Mission to Japan, March 1946, including Virgina C. Gildersleeve, Dean of Barnard College, Columbia University; and Mildred MacAfee Horton, President of Wellesley College and former director of the Waves. Elizabeth Gray Vining, a former schoolteacher and prominent Quaker from Philadelphia, became English language tutor to the young crown prince, Akihito, during his junior and early high school years. In 1950, she was succeeded by another Quaker, Esther Rhodes, who had served as senior committee member in Tokyo for Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia (LARA) to distribute contributions of food, medicine, and clothing and had also headed the Friends School in Tokyo.

Writer and journalist Helen Mears, author of a prewar book on mid-1930s Japan, Year of the Wild Boar, returned as the sole woman member of the Labor Advisory Commission in 1946 and contributed to discourse on protective legislation for women and establishment of a Women's and Minors' Bureau in the Labor Ministry, 1947. A critic of MacArthur, she invoked his great displeasure in articles she wrote after returning to the United States. In 1948, Dr. Florence Powdermaker, a distinguished medical doctor and psychiatrist, had arrived in Japan as a visiting expert on social research and was instrumental in helping media officials in CI&E gain support for a new division and improving their program. Fanny Hagin Mayer, who had spent her first fifteen years in Japan as the daughter of missionary parents, returned years later in 1947 as a women's affairs officer assigned to a civil affairs team in Niigata prefecture and became a specialist in Japanese folklore. She remained in Japan, teaching at Tsuda College, Sophia University, and other universities in Tokyo and publishing many translations, articles, and scholarly reviews on Japanese folklore.

Military Wives. The most prominent American woman in Japan was Jean McArthur, the General's wife since 1937. Jean and their young son, Arthur, were early arrivals in Occupied Japan. While the General went off daily to his office at the Dai Ichi building, Jean made a home life in the American Embassy complex. Since the General, by design, remained largely a figure of mystique and rarely traveled outside of his official work orbit, Mrs. McArthur became in effect his eyes and ears in meeting a variety of Japanese and foreign residents on social occasions. She visited hospitals, viewed parades, went to the war crimes hearings, toured work places, and attended flower shows and exhibitions. A Japanese friend from the Manila days, wife of a consul general, praised Jean as “the perfect wife, mother and housewife.” It was because of Jean's perfection, she argued, that General MacArthur was able to work hard at the office and to relax at home (Yoshida Ryoko, “Mrs. MacArthur as I Knew Her,” Nippon Times Magazine; March 21, 1947). Penny Ridgway, wife of MacArthur’s successor as Supreme Commander in April 1951, Matthew Ridgway, performed the same social role. Both figured in frequent press accounts and were favorites of photographers.

At lower levels of military life, in early 1946, when conditions in Japan seemed safe for families, wives and children of military and civilian personnel were allowed to join husbands and fathers. If married to regular GIs or non-commissioned officers, service wives tended to live in newly built foreign enclaves, such as Washington Heights or Grant Heights in Tokyo. Here they reconstructed as much as possible familiar patterns of American home, school, and social life. Washington Heights, covering a former parade ground near the Meiji Shrine, was the largest and most desirable of military dependents' housing areas. It was well-equipped with modern appliances, a post exchange and commissary store, an officers' club, swimming pools and tennis courts, a movie theater, and, of course, a chapel. Grant Heights, twelve miles from central Tokyo, opened in late 1947 and boasted of most of the modern amenities.

If married to senior officers, women and their families might live in homes requisitioned from well-off Japanese and enjoy a staff of servants to whom they taught the American way of housekeeping and cooking. Military and diplomatic wives formed many groups based on their social and religious interests—the Women's Christian Association, Catholic Women of Japan, Tokyo Women's Club, College Women's Club—and supported charities and orphanages and raised money for Japanese student scholarships. They held fashion shows to which they often invited Japanese women of their acquaintance. Those who took an interest in Japanese culture studied the tea ceremony, pottery, calligraphy and flower arrangement—even judo. At one point in 1949, an embittered Japanese housewife, Mrs. Mogi Teruko, launched at attack on what she considered to be the patronizing attitudes of American wives in Japan. Ultimately, such luminaries as Eleanor Roosevelt, Pearl Buck, and Senator Margaret Chase Smith were pulled into the fray.

Among the wives of military officers, several wrote columns for Japanese newspapers or produced books. Nancy Echols, wife of Colonel Marion P. Echols, MacArthur's chief Public Information Officer, began writing a column in 1948 called “Innocence Abroad,” for the Nippon Times (subsequently appearing in book form) and taught English to the oldest daughter of the emperor. She also founded the New Family Center in 1950 to teach democratic family relations through small discussion groups. Another author, Lucky Crockett, daughter of an Army office and a Red Cross worker, left a lively if superficial account of early Occupied Japan in Popcorn on the Ginza. Later, Margery Finn Brown, wife of a colonel, took a closer look at Occupied Japan, based on “girl talk” and dismay at misbehaving foreigners in Over A Bamboo Fence (1951). For the benefit of its American readers but also for curious Japanese, the Nippon Times ran columns on fashion and beauty, Western style.

Allied Women. Since Australian troops were the mainstay of the British Commonwealth Forces in Japan, stationed mainly around the Hiroshima area and Kure, Australian women were also a presence as nurses, medical personnel, and welfare workers. However, their numbers were small since the Australian government would not permit the stationing of Australian servicemen in Japan. Honor Tracy, a British novelist and travel writer, came for a visit in 1948, and published a memorable record of her tour, Kakemono (1950). Elise Grilli, who together with husband Marcel Grilli, had immigrated from Mussolini's Italy and worked for the OSS in Washington, D.C., during the war, covered Japanese art exhibits with an expert eye during and after the Occupation for readers of the Nippon Times. Marcel, a member of the Government Section, GHQ, remained in post-occupation Japan as a music critic. Their son, Peter Grilli, who was raised as a boy and youth in Occupied Japan, would later become a documentary filmmaker and President of the Japan Society of Boston.

German refugee in 1940 from Hitler and the Nazi Party, Eta Harich-Schneider was a distinguished harpsichordist and ethnomusicologist who conducted pioneer research into Japan's long musical history and liked to entertain occupiers at her Tokyo residence. Toward the end of the Occupation, Isobel Crowe, a native or Ireland and educated in New Zealand, arrived in Japan to represent the World Association of Girl Scouts and counsel the Japanese Girl Scout movement. Among foreign students admitted to Japan in 1952 was Carmen Blacker, a young English graduate student with wartime experience in codebreaking. She arrived at Keio University on a British Treasury Scholarship to study famed Meiji intellectual, educator, and journalist Fukuzawa Yukichi, the subject of her doctoral dissertation at Oxford University. She would continue her scholarly interest in Japan, especially in philosophy and religion, as a distinguished professor at Oxford University.

Asian women were also among the family members of foreign liaison missions stationed in Tokyo in lieu of formal diplomatic representation. One of the most astute observers of the Tokyo cultural scene at the level of the young elites, 1947-48, was Santha Rama Rau, the British and American educated daughter of the Sir Benegal Rama Rau, head of the Indian liaison mission to Japan. She taught the English language at the famous Freedom School and became a huge fan of Kabuki, all of which is recorded in her Occupation memoir, East of Home (1950).

Visitors. Apart from baseball stars, perhaps the most acclaimed foreign visitor, male or female, in the early and mid-Occupation period was American Helen Keller. World famous and honored for overcoming loss of eyesight, hearing, and speech, her six week sojourn in Japan in 1948 was big news and minutely covered. Birth control advocate Margaret Sanger was invited back to Japan by activist friends, but General MacArthur, protecting his reputation with the Catholic Church and portraying himself as neutral in the population debate, denied permission. In October 1952, she became one of the first foreigners to enter sovereign Japan. Oveta Culp Hobby, Vice President of the Houston Post and a former commander of the WACs, and Helen Rogers Reid, President of the New York Herald Tribune, arrived in Japan in late June 1947 as the only women on a world wide circuit of distinguished American journalists and publishers. According to the Pacific Stars and Stripes (which called them “distaff” journalists), they “told about 60 prominent Japanese women leaders that the eyes of the women of the world were on the Japanese women and that the state of a country was best reflected in that country's women.” Reid added “that the women of America are watching and caring about what happens to the Japanese women and told the women leaders, who are also wives and mothers, their children will 'lead better and fuller lives reflected in the work you are doing and will be proud of you for it'” (June 28 item). Author Nora Waln, who before the war had lived in China for twelve years, wrote articles about Japan for the Saturday Evening Post and other mass circulation magazines in 1948-49. Helen Lambert, member of the Washington Bar Association and wife of Associated Press staff correspondent Tom Lambert, became the first foreign woman lawyer licensed to practice law in Japan. A graduate of the University of Minnesota, she had studied law at the University of Washington and Gonzaga University and practiced law in the states of Washington and California. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, Lambert assisted in the prosecution of Class A war criminal Hoshino Naoki, former high bureaucrat in Manchukuo and Chief Cabinet Secretary in General Tōjō's wartime cabinet.

Long Ties. A story which became a Hollywood movie in1961 was the international marriage in 1931 of Gwen Harold, a native of Tennessee, to Terasaki Hidenori, a rising young diplomat at the Japanese Embassy, Washington D.C. With their daughter Mariko, born in Shanghai in 1932, Gwen moved to various posts with her husband, ending up again at the Washington Embassy where he was First Secretary (and allegedly a spy) at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, December 1941. She chose repatriation to Japan with her husband and daughter and lived a hard scrabble wartime life in the mountains and in Occupied Tokyo. By mutual agreement, she brought Mariko to Tennessee in 1949 for a high school and college education and never again saw Terasaki, who died in 1951. Her memoir of those years was published in 1957 as Bridge to the Sun.

Charlotte De Forest, born in Japan to American missionary parents and a veteran of forty years of living and teaching in Japan, had left in 1940 and spent the war years working with Japanese Americans in U.S. relocation camps. She returned in 1947, resumed teaching for three years at Kobe College for Woman and contributed to the debate on coeducation. In 1949, prior to departure and retirement, Sybil R. Courtice, long-time Canadian missionary teacher and welfare worker for the United Church of Canada, was honored for her efforts in an audience with the Empress. Among Courtice’s several teaching posts in Japan was the elite Tōyō Eiwa Girls' School in Tokyo. She, too, had left during the war and returned as soon as possible to help rehabilitate Canadian academies. An American missionary who stayed with the Japanese people during the war was Mary Florence Denton, a famed Congregational missionary teacher for almost fifty years at Dōshisha Women's College in Kyoto, a branch of a Christian institution founded in the 1870s by Japan's first ordained Christian minister. Close to ninety years of age (born in Grass Valley, California, 1857), ill and feeble, she was looked after by Japanese friends and students.

Alice and Otis Cary arrived in Kyoto in 1947 as missionaries and would remain for their entire lives. Otis, born in Hokkaido to missionary parents, a graduate of Amherst College, and fluent in Japanese, had been an interrogator of captured Japanese during the war. Alice, a medical doctor, continued her practice as a permanent resident in Japan and raised a family of four while Otis taught at Dōshisha and presided over Amherst House. Few foreign women embraced Japanese Buddhist teaching as fully and completely as Ruth Fuller Sasaki, a prewar American student of Asian religions and philosophy and convert to Zen Buddhism. As head of the First Zen Institute of America, New York City, and widow after a brief marriage to an elderly Zen master, she was permitted a return visit to Japan toward the end of the Occupation in 1949 to find a new teacher and continue training. Ordained as priest in 1953 at the Daitokuji Zen Temple in Kyoto, she remained in Japan for the rest of her life and published essays and translations of Zen teachings.

Embracing Japan. Recent feminist scholarship has raised questions about the attitudes of American women who “embraced the East.” Did they, for example, see Japan, the East, or the Orient, for example, as “spectacle and commodity”? This argument follows in the wake of similar questions about white male colonists and empire-builders—and the male gaze which emasculates colonial men and infantilizes colonial women. Was the desire of Euro/American women to help liberate Japanese women merely a manifestation of a sense of superiority or of patronizing attitudes? Or were they driven by Cold War policy considerations? Policies which they did not make but supported? Is such speculation more theory than fact driven? Many of these American who served in Occupied Japan were neither born there nor attracted to Japan for its culture, religion, and history. They came to Japan to serve their country, do a job, find adventure, give advice--and perhaps to spread the American dream in the aftermath of total war. Their personalities, backgrounds, and attitudes were mixed. In the end, they were as much enlightened by Japan as driven to enlighten Japan?