At the end of the Second World War, Japan was occupied by the Allied Powers, led by the United States with contributions from Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. This was the first time that Japan had ever been occupied by a foreign power. In the initial phase of the Occupation, the United States and the other Allied Powers, under the leadership of American general Douglas McArthur sought to carry out an thoroughgoing transformation of Japanese politics and society, in an effort to prevent Japan from threatening the peace again in the future. Among other measures, the Occupation authorities pressured Emperor Hirohito into renouncing his divinity, disbanded the Japanese military, purged wartime leaders from serving in government, ordered the dissolution of the massive "zaibatsu" industrial conglomerates that had powered Japan's war machine, vastly increased land ownership with an extensive land reform, legalized labor unions and the Japan Communist Party, gave women the right to vote, and sought to decentralize and democratize the police and the education system. Many of these changes were formalized in a brand new Constitution of Japan, written from scratch by Occupation authorities and then translated into Japanese and duly passed by the Japanese Diet. Most famously, Article 9 of the new constitution expressly forbade Japan from maintaining a military.