Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

The president of the Komatsu company, a maker of tank parts and anchor chains for warships, was inspired by the sight of American bulldozers leveling an airfield to make the bulldozer his company’s literal vehicle for recovery. The successful postwar camera manufacturers Canon and Nikon had been producers of optics for the war effort. In 1946, Honda Sōichirō, who had been a small wartime subcontractor supplying piston rings to Toyota, began motorizing bicycles with tiny engines the military had used in communications devices. Hugely popular among small-shop owners and petty black-market operatives, these motorbikes led to the marketing of a motorcycle named “Dream” in 1949 and marked the beginning of the Honda Motor Company empire. Many successful postwar electronics firms had their genesis in middle-size companies that had manufactured communications equipment for the military. Within weeks of the surrender, Ibuka Masaru, a former employee of one such a company, had collaborated with a few colleagues to produce a popular device that converted shortwave transmissions to normal broadcasting frequencies—laying the basis for the great Sony corporation.20