Through Masayuki Takayama’s essay “The War They Want to Forget,” this article examines the dismantling of Japan’s heavy industry under the Occupation, the destruction of Dr. Yoshio Nishina’s cyclotron and the Koken long-range aircraft, the Korean War’s role in preserving industrial Japan, American casualties, and the historical conduct of Korea and China.

September 6, 2020
The following is taken from an essay by Masayuki Takayama entitled “The War They Want to Forget,” which appeared in an issue of Shukan Shincho two weeks earlier.
This essay, too, proves that he is a journalist without equal in the postwar world.
The reason for republishing this article today is that the Korean War cannot be understood in its entirety if it is described merely as a war from which Japan profited through special procurement demand.
Behind it lay the dismantling of Japan’s industrial power under the Occupation, the enormous sacrifices made by American soldiers and others, and a history involving South Korea and China that must not easily be forgotten.
The following is quoted from the essay.
[From Masayuki Takayama’s “The War They Want to Forget”]
At the milestone marking the seventieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, Moon Jae-in made the rather spiteful remark that “while our people were experiencing the pain of war, there were also countries that, conversely, enjoyed a special wartime boom.”
Japan certainly enjoyed that special demand to its heart’s content.
More than merely enjoying it, Japan was able, thanks to the war, to stop the demontage that the United States had been carrying out.
Demontage is a modern form of plunder in which the industrial sector of an advanced industrial nation is taken away wholesale.
The precedent was Germany after the First World War, when the Ruhr, the heart of German industry, was occupied by France, while even Bayer’s flagship product, aspirin, and the company’s name were taken away by the United States.
After the last war, the Soviet Union likewise took 80 percent of Germany’s steel production and carried away its industrial machinery wholesale.
The same thing happened in Japan.
The heavy-industrial sector was dismantled piece by piece by war-reparations missions, and its machinery was sent to China and Korea.
Dr. Yoshio Nishina’s cyclotron was dismantled and dumped into Tokyo Bay.
The aircraft factories that had produced the Zero fighter and Toryu were razed, while even the Koken aircraft, which held the world record for long-distance flight, was crushed by bulldozers and dumped into the duck pond within Haneda Airport.
Just as Japan was being reduced to an agricultural country capable of producing little more than pots and pans, the Korean War broke out.
Japan served as a rear-area logistics base, undertaking everything from the repair of tanks and warships to the task of preparing fallen servicemen for their final journey home.
Industrial Japan escaped dismantlement.
The Japanese even regarded it as a twisted form of repayment from the Korean people.
However, Moon Jae-in’s expression, “the countries that enjoyed that war,” is unacceptable.
Japan alone enjoyed its benefits, while every other country experienced nothing but misery.
It is all the more astonishing that Moon Jae-in appears unaware of this.
Take the United States, for example.
Merely because it was South Korea’s patron, it became thoroughly embroiled in that war.
The United States then drove the North Korean army back within six months in place of the South Korean forces.
The war should have ended there, but an unexpected development awaited.
A recent article in The New York Times told the story of Jack Chapman, who was seventeen years old when he found himself there.
The place was the frozen Chosin Reservoir.
They were suddenly attacked, and he recalled, “We fired the 75-millimeter recoilless rifle repeatedly, but they kept coming, one after another.”
It was what is commonly called a human-wave attack.
Moreover, those advancing upon them were not North Koreans but Chinese.
He was struck by bullets throughout his body and lost consciousness, and when he awoke, he “had become a prisoner.”
From that moment, the fighting between North and South Koreans turned into a war between Americans and Chinese, and 33,652 American soldiers were killed.
The price paid for so much bloodshed was a “draw.”
It lacked the dramatic character of the Pacific War, and Congress referred to it as an “inflict (disturbance),” not even regarding it as a war.
Although Private Jack fought after being struck by five bullets, he was not even awarded the Purple Heart.
“Even so, the old soldiers smile sadly, saying that they held back the brutal Communist forces and defended democratic South Korea,” The New York Times concluded in its article about Jack.
As for Syngman Rhee of the South Korea that had been saved, he immediately entrusted the war to the United States forces, while hunting down and killing the remaining members of the Communist-affiliated Bodo League within South Korea.
The total number purged reached 1.1 million.
He also made trouble for Japan.
He drew the Syngman Rhee Line, seized Japanese fishing boats, and demanded money from Shigeru Yoshida.
All of this took place while the Korean War was still being fought.
It was also a cruel war for the Chinese.
Many of the soldiers thrown into the human-wave attacks that terrified the American forces had formerly belonged to the Nationalist Army.
After Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan, the soldiers left behind were disposed of in this manner.
The Korean War, in which one side abandoned its own war and caused trouble for other countries, began on June 25, 1950, and this year marks its seventieth anniversary.
Leaving aside the North, which has regressed to the level of the Yi dynasty, South Korea may have felt some inclination to reflect upon its conduct, because it sent commemorative gifts expressing gratitude to the countries upon which it had imposed the war.
Those gifts consisted of one million masks for the Wuhan coronavirus.
“To think that masks represent their feelings toward the heroic spirits of other countries who died for South Korea—is this some kind of joke?” said an organization of Japanese-American soldiers that had lost 240 men.
No country is rewarded for becoming involved with the Korean Peninsula.
The Japanese should take this lesson to heart.
[On the Occasion of This Republication]
When discussing Japan’s postwar recovery, if we focus only upon the result known as the “Korean War special procurement boom,” we overlook the crucial premise of how the foundations of Japan’s heavy industry, science, and technology had been dismantled until immediately before the war.
The fate of Dr. Yoshio Nishina’s cyclotron, Japan’s aircraft factories, and the record-setting Koken aircraft concretely demonstrates the magnitude of what postwar Japan was on the verge of losing.
The Korean War gave Japan an opportunity to survive as an industrial nation, while at the same time imposing enormous human losses upon the United States and the other countries that participated in the war.
History must not be described solely in terms of one country’s “profit.”
We must also look at who fought, who was sacrificed, and who sustained the order that followed.
In confronting questions concerning the Korean Peninsula, the Japanese people must not be swept away by emotional language or one-sided interpretations of history, but must look directly at the facts and the course of events.
The original and definitive version of this article is published on the official website.