Problems of War Production Control in Japan

Abstract

S INCE PEARL HARBOR the American people have had considerable experience of the difficulties involved in placing a complex industrial economy on a modern war footing and in seeing that this war economy is properly administered. There is some degree of satisfaction in knowing that Japan has been experiencing similar difficulties, and in very acute form. The fact that Americans had credited Japan with a thoroughly streamlined economic organization, along with the other elements of a well-oiled war machine, tends to enhance this satisfaction. There is good reason to assert that the United States War Production Board, as an instrument of production control which combines the essential features of flexibility and centralized authority, has been, despite all its troubles, considerably more effective than Japan's unwieldy apparatus, which General Tojo inherited at the outbreak of war and which he has been laboriously remodeling against many political obstacles for the past twelve months. Certain aspects of Japan's economic preparations for war were managed with great efficiency. In the period which preceded Pearl Harbor, the procurement of strategic raw materials and vital machine tools which Japan lacked was planned with extreme care and thoroughly implemented. There is clear evidence that the Japanese military authorities manipulated this program from behind the scenes. They were also instrumental in stimulating an unusually rapid development of the automotive and airplane industries in Japan after 1938. Arguing from these facts, Westerners have been inclined to credit the Japanese military with a greater degree of control over the productive system in Japan than they actually possessed. In this respect, the analogy often drawn between Japan and Nazi Germany is misleading, true as it may be in other respects. The Nazis won virtually full control over the German state apparatus in 1933-34. This political monopoly carried with it practically unlimited authority over the German economic system, which was comprehensively reorganized for war over a six-year period. Nothing like so sweeping and