Perhaps the issue here is that some of us are lacking the conceptual clarity to express what is going on. For me, the US is not physically occupying Germany and Japan and shaping their politics, as some of you seem to be insinuating. However, it is evident that US still wields power and influence enough to induce these states and limit their policy options. This is simply a product of unipolarity at the level of the international system. You don't need to physically occupy a territory or have domestic collaborators if the lesser powers (in this case, Germany and Japan) are essentially your security intermediaries by virtue of relative material capabilities and overlapping interests (which is a result of economic interdependence and solidarity among the transnational capitalist class). But as for actual, physical occupation? Those ended a long time ago. When you play the game of international politics, you win or you get by occupied by foreign powers. Occupations eventually end, and given enough time, fortunes can reverse.
**warning, rant imminent**
As regards to the conspiratorial claims here (and elsewhere): ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The conspiratorial mind is simple and advances arguments by posing sophomoric questions, speaking in cryptic language, advancing immature moralistic points, and attempting to rouse fears of internal enemies. Yeah, states use collaborators in places they invade to project power domestically. That's what you are supposed to do. You can have the most powerful army in the world, but without local knowledge and collaborators, your occupation will fail. Take the first Italian invasion of Abyssinia. The technologically superior Italians were soundly defeated by the locals. Then consider the British conquest of the Sudan; they used local collaborators to conquer them. Yes. The Germans? They had their local collaborators in France and the Ukraine. And there were Germans who collaborated with the Allies too! People collaborate with invaders because they have grievances or material interests, which is perfectly normal. I mean, not everyone supported the Nazis to begin with. And consider a contemporary example like Turkey's current ruling party: it is probably more popular than were the Nazis at the height of their popularity. But there were many, many people who simply cooperated with the regime because they were afraid or because they got so used to routine (see Arendt's point about the 'banality of evil'); and some resisted them. I know it is hard for some of you to accept that people can dissent from the "popular will." In the conspiratorial mind, it is impossible for any individual to have agency beyond the interests of powerful and clandestine groups that purportedly run the world! The incredulity with which the conspiratorial mind views skepticism and democratic dissent tells us something very important: that deep down they are immature fascists who do not understand how human relations and societies operate --but they have very strong opinions regardless, and of course they are right! Because they can always pick and choose every piece of information that suits them. Fallacies of reasoning? The difference between causation and correlation? These are but the fanciful inventions of effete collaborators who are pulling thew wool over societies' eyes.
"It is a dangerous thing to be a Machiavelli. It is a disastrous thing to be a Machiavelli without virtū."
- Hans J. Morgenthau