Postwar Japan - American Perspectives - 1947-1968 - Digital Archive - Molly Hormann

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress.

“A vast wilderness of rubble and debris stretched as far is the eye could see. Here and there the dark, scorched husk of a concrete building thrust skyward like a weird funeral pyre. A few people, faces blank with
shock, wandered through smoking ruins left by the nightly armada of giant planes and the shower of death from the heavens. This was Tokyo and 144 other cities of Japan—broken, prostrate, and bleeding—when the Pacific war ended August 14, 1945. Today, 10 years after the surrender, Japan has raised shining new
communities from the ashes. …”

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress.

“… Today, 11 years since its surrender, Japan is first in the world in fishing haul, second in ship building, third in cotton textile production, sixth in steel. Its foreign exchange reserves had risen from almost nothing to a postwar record of $1,396,000,000 in February of this year. Japan's rate of recovery has been the fastest of all war-ravaged nations. In percentages, it has out stripped the spectacular showings of even West Germany, Italy, France and Britain. … “

HathiTrust

“… The efforts of Japan to reestablish its economy after World War II have posed serious problems not only for Japan but also for some of its trading partners, including the United States. Most of the problems are basically no different from those that existed before the war, but their impact-particularly on Japan-has been intensified in consequence of the cleavage between the Communist countries and the democracies. Japan's ability to maintain a viable economy is of necessity dependent on maintenance of an expanding volume of foreign trade, and its choice of trading partners will largely govern the composition of that trade. …”

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress.

“ … the Japan of 1959 is a marvel of booming production, a welling reservoir of technical knowledge of the most advanced and intricate kind. It can manufacture radars, transistor radios, diesel locomotives, industrial power plants, just about everything except the atomic bomb. It can play a most significant role in Asian development - if the Asian countries will allow it to do so. …”