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The Japanese War Economy: A Review
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
Extract
The United States government in the closing days of the European war initiated what seems a unique venture in war history: to dissect the war anatomies of major enemy countries and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses on the basis of enemy data and interviews. The diagnoses, while primarily to trace the effects of strategic bombing upon enemy war potentials, were also to serve as a means of checking United States techniques of estimating enemy war potentials. Accordingly, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey was formed and, hard on the heels of occupying troops, corps of economists, engineers, and military technicians descended upon the remains of the German and Japanese economies for their autopsies. The results of their work have been incorporated in a series of technical papers and two major reports of particular interest to economists, published by the Over-all Economic Effects Division of the Survey.
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- Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1948
References
1 U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, The effects of strategic bombing on the German war economy (Washington: Govt. Printing Office, 1945, 286Google Scholar pp., tables) and The effects of strategic bombing on Japan's war economy (Washington: Govt. Printing Office, 1946, 244Google Scholar pp., tables). Additional technical papers relating to Japan are listed on pp. 243-44 of the latter report.
2 This conclusion is emphasized by Nicholas Kaldor in his article based upon data in the German report entitled “The German war economy,” Review of economic studies, 13 (1945–46), 33–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Klein, Burton H., “Germany's preparation for war,” American economic review, 38 (March 1948), 56–77.Google Scholar
3 Major credit for the economic analysis in this report goes to Milton Gilbert, Paul Baran, T. A. Bisson, Russell Dorr, and Laurence Bridges.
4 For example, Horst Mendershausen wrote in 1943, “The year 1940–1941 found Germany and Japan in the total war phase” (The economics of war [rev. ed., New York: Prentice-Hall, 1943], 208).Google Scholar However, once “all-out” war decisions were made, available comparable data indicate Japan made greater gains in 1944 over 1940 domestic gross output than did other major belligerents, excepting the United States (see Table 1).
5 In 1937 China had supplied 14 per cent of Japan's iron ore imports; by 1941, 50 per cent.
6 Merchant ship sinkings from December 1941 to the end of 1942 were but some 15 per cent of total merchant tonnage sunk during 1941–1945 (computed from Table p. 43, of the report).
7 Even this difference does not adequately express the intensity of Japan's effort in view of her lower productivity and living standard.
8 Use of U.S. estimates of Japanese national income, which postwar findings proved laudably accurate, might have eliminated the error from the second source by suggesting the inability of Japan's economy to support the sum of the estimates for individual products.
9 When nations are likely to be consuming their capital during a war, there is much to be said for comparisons using GNP totals rather than the net national-income estimates more frequently used. The data were not available during the war, however, for GNP estimates for enemy countries.
10 Estimate by the writer made on the basis of division of U.S. resources between the wars as used in reparation parleys.