The Takarazuka Theater, at Yurakucho, was requisitioned by Occupation forces from 1945-1952 for use as a movie and stage theater for Allied military personnel. During this time it was renamed the “Ernie Pyle” theater, after the beloved American journalist killed in 1945 on Ie Shima while covering the Okinawa campaign for Scripps-Howard newspapers.

See also:
Takarazuka Gekijo (Theater)

The Ernie Pyle née Takarazuka Theater, c. 1950, during the Occupation.

“I held my mother’s elbow and looked through the bare windows [of the trolley] at gray ruins enlivened here and there by glints of yellow new wood,as though lemon trees were growing out of the ashes. At Yurakucho, a few tall office buildings were still standing; I glimpsed them from the moving streetcar, through arms, between heads, and in their strange isolation they appeared like giants from another age. The Tokyo Takarazuka Theater had a new name on its edifice, in English and katakana: ‘Ernie Pyle.’

“‘What kind of a name is that?’ I asked my mother.

“‘A famous American.'”

– The Commoner, John Burnham Schwartz, 2008