[bluepizza]

It does make a lot of sense. In the most basic terms, almost no American spoke Japanese, let alone at a scientific level. Collaboration would be at the essence.

But I think the greater point that you are missing is that you can't walk over a country of 150 million people and achieve total power. Without large doses of good will, collaboration, and soft power, resistance gets in the way of every single goal an occupation has.

[bouncycastle]

> almost no American spoke Japanese, let alone at a scientific level.

Nonsense. Quote "the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) trained and graduated nearly 6,000 linguists—the majority of whom were Japanese Americans." Source https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Military%20Intelligence%20Se...

[meitham]

This doesn’t change any of your points but records show Japan population around half that of the US during WW2, roughly half the number you mentioned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan