Holy smoke 1940s

Missionaries were given extra-legal privileges including army transport, the right to make purchases at subsidized American military base stores and the right to use U.S. Army postal service mailboxes. MacArthur personally asked the American Bible Society to send 10 million Bibles to Japan. The Bibles arrived on military ships, freight paid by American taxpayers.

While at first there did seem to be an outburst of Christian conversions, it soon became apparent that many of the converts were out of work and had nothing better to do than attend church meetings. As to the brisk sales of Bibles, they were printed on paper that was a perfect substitute for high-priced cigarette paper. English-speaking Japanese made jokes about Holy Smoke.