The Research on the Forestry under the Military Occupation in Post-War Japan

Till the end of the Second World War, the Japanese were obsessed by the belief that Japan suffered from the shortage of natural resources and needed to support expansionism overseas to increase the strain on natural resources. However, after the War, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) prevented Japan from its access to raw materials overseas. A considerable amount of wood was necessary to respond to the higher demands for lumber as building construction materials for the reconstruction of bomb-damaged urban areas, fuelwood, and pulpwood. Forest resources were overused during the War, a large area of cutover land, which emerged throughout Japan. Moreover, a large number of Japanese immigrated to rural areas and sought an opportunity for employment. The American Occupation Forces adopted an integrated approach to forestation and afforestation to meet the present demands and create renewable resource harvest. General MacArthur and his SCAP staff in Tokyo were “New Dealers” who supported official intervention at a Japanese social reform and organized social scientific research projects which collected information useful for Japanese undertaking reforms of forestation policies. This paper discusses how the American staff collaborating with Japanese scientists formulated forestry research for increasing opportunities for employment in small-scale family enterprise and restoring the resources in forest lands. The paper investigates their approach to the forestry industry and what sort of research methods the Americans applied to the research for exploitative tendencies among labour suppliers.