Surviving the Pacific War Torch: The Cyclical Revitalization of Nagoya from Meiji Restoration to 1960
Date
2021-01
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Abstract
By the end of the twentieth century, the city of Nagoya was a major core of Japan’s automotive, aerospace, ceramics, and machinery industries. Nagoya has not always been such a hub. Prior to the war in the Pacific, the main industry was textiles, predominately pottery and loom work until the 1930s. The start of the Fifteen-Years War created a need for heavy industries to take over led by the production of Mitsubishi’s fighter planes. In 1945, American forces used strategic bombing to fire-bomb Japanese cities to diminish military factories and citizen moral. Nagoya is typically overshadowed in the fire-bombing campaign by other cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, and Kobe. This paper will demonstrate how Allied bombing was a transformative incident in the economic history of Nagoya, and how this catastrophe set way for the modern urban economy. By chronicling the city’s economy before the war, showing the extent of the destruction caused by the bombings, and exhibiting the reconstructive efforts, the impact of Allied bombing can be assessed. The key objective this paper supports is how in-spite of experiencing a horrific tragedy, Nagoya was able to benefit from it as it was given a fresh start to revamp its entire economy as the city progressed into the latter half of the twentieth century.
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Nagoya-shi (Japan)