ABSTRACT
The aftermath of war and defeat found Japan in an appalling condition. The country had been devastated by the air raids. Most of its major cities lay in ruins. Tokyo had lost 57 percent of its dwellings and Osaka about 60 percent. In all, eighty-one cities had been damaged by air raids. Nationally about 20 percent of the houses had been destroyed by the air raids, and about 8 million people had become homeless. Three years after the end of the war one in four families still did not have regular dwellings. Those who lost their homes lived in shacks, packing crates, and corrugated iron lean-tos, or slept in railroad station passageways. Makeshift huts remained in the major cities as long as a decade after the war ended. The transportation system, telephones, power plants, and other utilities were on the verge of breaking down, having been subjected to maximum use without replacements during the war. The United States air and naval attacks had destroyed 30 percent of Japan’s industrial capacity, 80 percent of its shipping, and 30 percent of its thermal power. At the end of the war industrial production stood at barely 10 percent of the normal prewar level. 1
