Author Description

The unprecedented influence of United States military governments in Germany and Japan makes this volume a fundamental contribution to several basic fields: history, political science, economics, archival administration, military studies, civil affairs, and international law and criminal justice. Although the speeches and discussions of the 1977 “Americans as Proconsuls” Conference were often piquant, entertaining, nostalgic, each addressed the core issues of the topic, often setting the historical record straight. The chief virtue of these essays, however, may be, as Edward N. Peterson states in his own piece, that “The scholar’s history of the occupation could still assist the public and the politician to avoid the pitfalls of impossible dreams and illusions created by an American isolation from the rest of suffering humanity.”