Emperor Hirohito ruled during the Showa Period and is considered by many to be the father of modern Japan.

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During this time period Japan expanded its empire, engaging in the Pacific War also known as the second Sino-Japanese War. This war preceded Japan's involvement in World War II.  

In 1935, Japan began secret experimentation in Unit 731 that eventually ended in 1945.  This, along with the rape of Nanking (which occurred between 1937 and 1938, mark 2 of Japan's darkest parts of history.  Nanking saw hundreds of thousand of men, women, and children murdered and a large portion of those sexually assaulted and raped.  Unit 731 was responsible for about 3,000 deaths of men, women, and children.  Unit 731, however, kept their subjects alive under extremely torturous circumstances.  The prisoners in unit 731 were subjected to rape, vivisection, frostbite, forced pregnancy and many other forms of torture and experimentation.

World War II led to a sequence of events, ending with the drop of the first two nuclear bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The world had never seen such devastation, and the war ended rather abruptly.

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The US set out to recreate Japan in a new image, its own.