America's Military Occupation of Germany and Japan

choi

Nicholas M Gallagher, The Birth of Pax Americana. Contra conventional wisdom, occupations can change political cultures. But it may be that it can't be done without deeply coercive measures. Wall Street Journal, Dec 28, 2016
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-birth-of-pax-americana-1482882200
(book review on Susan L Carruthers, The Good Occupation; American soldiers and the hazards of peace. Harvard University Press, 2016)

Note:
(a) contra (preposition): "in opposition or contrast to"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/contra
(b) " 'Peace is hell,' Harry Truman told the Gridiron Club in December 1945, riffing off William Tecumseh Sherman."
(i) William Tecumseh Sherman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman

Quote: "On June 19, 1879, Sherman delivered an address to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy, in which he may have uttered the famous phrase 'War Is Hell.' On April 11, 1880, he addressed a crowd of more than 10,000 at Columbus, Ohio: 'There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.' In 1945, President Harry S Truman would say: 'Sherman was wrong. I'm telling you I find peace is hell.' " (citations omitted)

(ii) Gridiron Club
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridiron_Club

I can not find the name origin of Gridiron Club. But search images.google.com with (gridiron cook) -- the word "cook" is necessary to exclude football fields -- and you will see what it looks like (similar to the logo in the Wikipedia page). Presumably members of the Club enjoy the notion of grilling politicians.

(c) "The chaos of postwar Europe and Japan and the boredom of guard duty offered ample opportunities for mischief, chief among them looting and black-marketeering (enlisted men could get $150 for a cartoon [sic; should be carton] of cigarettes). Then there was the sex: The military's failed attempts to enforce a no-fraternization policy gave way to barracks situations that presaged the 1960s [sexual revolution]. By April 1946 Uncle Sam started shipping over wives and families; it was bad for discipline and public opinion for letters home to read, 'All Germany is just one big Whore House.'  Truman, under pressure from Congress and the public, was bringing troops home as fast as he could: By the end of 1945 over six million soldiers and sailors had been discharged. But that wasn’t quick enough for the military wives who cornered Gen Eisenhower on Capitol Hill in January 1946, volleying questions about soaring divorce rates and demanding their husbands back."
(d) " 'Our aimless piddling in the mud is becoming disgusting to me as well as to many others,' Bob Titus wrote from Okinawa, where he was building hospitals. 'Our reason for being here apparently ceased to exist when [Japan] surrendered.' " (brackets in the original)

piddle (vi): "DAWDLE, PUTTER"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/piddle

(e) "At times, Ms Carruthers, who is a professor of history at Rutgers-Newark, uses academic, P.C. language in ways that are jarring. What was 'micro-,' exactly, about the aggressions suffered by black troops in a Jim Crow-era military?"
(i) Rutgers University
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutgers_University
(Rutgers has three campuses located throughout New Jersey: the New Brunswick campus in New Brunswick and adjacent Piscataway main campus], the Newark campus and the Camden campus)
(ii) Jim Crow laws
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws
(section 1 Etymology)
(iii) Executive Order 9981
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9981
(issued on July 26, 1948, by President Harry S Truman; Most of the actual enforcement of the order was accomplished by President Dwight D Eisenhower's administration (1953-1961) )

Led to integration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_integration
in US armed forces.
(iv) The sentence -- "What was 'micro-,' exactly, about the aggressions suffered by black troops in a Jim Crow-era military?" -- is a politically correct way to say: US military then was segregated, how did black soldiers get micro-aggression from white ones?