Douglas MacArthur in the context of "Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy"

Japan was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II from the surrender of the Empire of Japan on September 2, 1945, at the war's end until the Treaty of San Francisco took effect on April 28, 1952. The occupation, led by the American military with support from the British Commonwealth and under the supervision of the Far Eastern Commission, involved a total of nearly one million Allied soldiers. The occupation was overseen by the US General Douglas MacArthur, who was appointed Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers by the US president Harry S. Truman; MacArthur was succeeded as supreme commander by General Matthew Ridgway in 1951. Unlike in the occupations of Germany and Austria, the Soviet Union had little to no influence in Japan, declining to participate because it did not want to place Soviet troops under MacArthur's direct command.

This foreign presence marks the only time in the history of Japan that it has been occupied by a foreign power. However, unlike in Germany, the Allies never assumed direct control over Japan's civil administration. In the immediate aftermath of Japan's military surrender, the country's government continued to formally operate under the provisions of the Meiji Constitution.

The Constitution of Japan is the supreme law of Japan. Written primarily by American civilian officials during the occupation of Japan after World War II, it was adopted on 3 November 1946 and came into effect on 3 May 1947, succeeding the Meiji Constitution of 1889. The constitution consists of a preamble and 103 articles grouped into 11 chapters. It is based on the principles of popular sovereignty, with the Emperor of Japan as the symbol of the state; pacifism and the renunciation of war; and individual rights.

Upon the surrender of Japan at the end of the war in 1945, Japan was occupied and U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, directed Prime Minister Kijūrō Shidehara to draft a new constitution. Shidehara created a committee of Japanese scholars for the task, but MacArthur reversed course in February 1946 and presented a draft created under his own supervision, which was reviewed and modified by the scholars before its adoption. Also known as the "MacArthur Constitution", "Post-war Constitution" (戦後憲法, Sengo-Kenpō), or "Peace Constitution" (平和憲法, Heiwa-Kenpō), it is relatively short at 5,000 signs, less than a quarter the length of the average national constitution if one compares it with constitutions written in alphabetical word-based languages.

Brisbane (/ˈbrɪzbən/ BRIZ-bən; Turrbal/Yagara: Meanjin, Meaanjin, Maganjin or Magandjin) is the capital and largest city of the state of Queensland and the third-most populous city in Australia, with a population of approximately 2.8 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of South East Queensland and is located roughly in the midpoint of Australia's eastern coastline. It is an urban agglomeration with a population of over 4 million. The central business district is situated within a peninsula of the Brisbane River about 15 km (9 mi) from its mouth at Moreton Bay. Greater Brisbane sprawls over the hilly floodplain of the Brisbane River Valley between Pacific Ocean and the Taylor and D'Aguilar mountain ranges, encompassing several local government areas, most centrally the City of Brisbane, the most populous local government area in Australia. The demonym of Brisbane is Brisbanite or Brisbaner.

The Moreton Bay penal settlement was founded in 1824 at Redcliffe as a place for secondary offenders from the Sydney colony, but in May 1825 moved to North Quay on the banks of the Brisbane River, so named for the Governor of New South Wales Sir Thomas Brisbane. German Lutherans established the first free settlement of Zion Hill at Nundah in 1838, and in 1859 Brisbane was chosen as Queensland's capital when the state separated from New South Wales. During World War II, the Allied command in the South West Pacific was based in the city, along with the headquarters for General Douglas MacArthur of the United States Army.

The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (Japanese: 連合国軍最高司令官, romanized: Rengōkokugun saikōshireikan), or SCAP, was the title held by General Douglas MacArthur during the United States–led Allied occupation of Japan following World War II. It issued SCAP Directives (alias SCAPIN, SCAP Index Number) to the Japanese government, aiming to suppress its "militaristic nationalism". The position was created at the start of the occupation of Japan on August 14, 1945. It was originally styled the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers.

In Japan, the position was generally referred to as GHQ (General Headquarters), as SCAP also referred to the offices of the occupation (which was officially referred by SCAP itself as General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (連合国軍最高司令官総司令部, Rengōkokugun saikōshireikan sōshireibu; abbreviated as GHQ–SCAP)), including a staff of several hundred US civil servants as well as military personnel. Some of these personnel effectively wrote a first draft of the Japanese Constitution, which the National Diet then ratified after a few amendments. Australian, British Empire, and New Zealand forces under SCAP were organized into a sub-command known as British Commonwealth Occupation Force.

General Order No. 1 for the surrender of Japan was prepared by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff and approved by President Harry Truman on August 17, 1945.

It was issued by General Douglas MacArthur to the representative of the Empire of Japan following the surrender of Japan, and then issued by Japanese Imperial General Headquarters to the forces of the Empire of Japan on 2 September 1945. It instructed Japanese forces to surrender to designated Allied commanders, reveal all current military deployments, and preserve military equipment for later disarmament. It also specified the occupation of Japan and Japanese-controlled areas by forces of the Allied Powers.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was a military trial convened on April 29, 1946 to try leaders of the Empire of Japan for their crimes against peace, conventional war crimes, and crimes against humanity, leading up to and during World War II. The IMTFE was modeled after the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, Germany, which prosecuted the leaders of Nazi Germany for their war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity.

Following Japan's defeat and occupation by the Allies, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, United States General Douglas MacArthur, issued a special proclamation establishing the IMTFE. A charter was drafted to establish the court's composition, jurisdiction, and procedures; the crimes were defined based on the Nuremberg Charter. The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal was composed of judges, prosecutors, and staff from eleven countries that had fought against Japan: Australia, Canada, China, France, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States; the defense consisted of Japanese and American lawyers. The Tokyo Trial exercised broader temporal jurisdiction than its counterpart in Nuremberg, beginning from the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Twenty-eight high-ranking Japanese military and political leaders were tried by the court, including current and former prime ministers, cabinet members, and military commanders. They were charged with fifty-five separate counts, including the waging wars of aggression, murder, and various war crimes and crimes against humanity (such as torture and forced labor) against prisoners-of-war, civilian internees, and the inhabitants of occupied territories; ultimately, 45 of the counts, including all the murder charges, were ruled either redundant or not authorized under the IMTFE Charter. The Tokyo Trial lasted more than twice as long as the better-known Nuremberg trials, and its impact was similarly influential in the development of international law; similar international war crimes tribunals would not be established until the 1990s.

Lieutenant General Richard Kerens Sutherland (27 November 1893 – 25 June 1966) was a United States Army officer during World War II. He served as General of the Army Douglas MacArthur's Chief of Staff in the South West Pacific Area during the war.

General of the Army (abbreviated as GA) is a five-star general officer rank in the United States Army. It is generally equivalent to the rank of field marshal in other countries. In the United States, a General of the Army ranks above generals and is equivalent to a fleet admiral and a general of the Air Force. The General of the Army insignia consisted of five 3⁄8-inch (9.5 mm) stars in a pentagonal pattern, with touching points. The insignia was paired with the gold and enameled United States coat of arms on service coat shoulder loops. The silver colored five-star chain has major insignia alone would be worn for use as a collar insignia of grade and on the garrison cap. Soft shoulder epaulets with five 7⁄16-inch (11 mm) stars in silver thread and gold-threaded United States coat of arms on green cloth were worn with shirts and sweaters.

The rank of "General of the Army" (the highest rank in the army) has had two incarnations. The first was introduced in 1866, following the American Civil War. While it was nominally a four-star rank, structurally it had authority over the entire Army; it was reserved for the Commanding General of the United States Army, and was held by three different men in succession from 1866 to 1888: Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan. When it was created by Congress for Grant, Grant had already reached the highest rank historically used in the United States, the three star lieutenant general. The "General of the Army" rank was revived during World War II as the modern five-star rank. The rank does not imply command of the entire Army and may be awarded to more than one officer at a time. It has been held by five different men since 1944, four promoted to the rank in December 1944 (George C. Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Henry H. Arnold), and one promoted in September 1950 (Omar Bradley).

The Asiatic-Pacific theater was the theater of operations of U.S. forces during World War II in the Pacific War during 1941–1945. From mid-1942 until the end of the war in 1945, two U.S. operational commands were in the Pacific. The Pacific Ocean Areas (POA), divided into the Central Pacific Area, the North Pacific Area and the South Pacific Area, were commanded by Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief Pacific Ocean Areas. The South West Pacific Area (SWPA) was commanded by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander South West Pacific Area. During 1945, the United States added the United States Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific, commanded by General Carl A. Spaatz.

Because of the complementary roles of the United States Army and the United States Navy in conducting war, the Pacific Theater had no single Allied or U.S. commander (comparable to General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower in the European Theater of Operations). No actual command existed; rather, the Asiatic-Pacific Theater was divided into SWPA, POA, and other forces and theaters, such as the China Burma India Theater.