SESSION VII
357
get there in 1953; from {948 through [982 the people looked about the .
same.
They were pretty shabby; I couldn't help but feel sorry for
them. Most of them had pre-war clothing and sweaters with lots of
holes in them and beat-up old sneakers and things like that. When I
got there in 1954 there was a big difference. The girls were beginning to look after their appearance, and there were new “clothes; you
began to see that they were on the upturn.
EISENBUD: The impact of the Korean war was enormous in the
parts of Japan that | saw up around Tokyo and down around Hiroshima
where the U. S. and Great Britain had bases but I don't know what
the figures are in relation to their own economy.
FREMONT-SMITH: So it wasn't our effort to heip Japan but it was
our fighting the Korean war that helped them, incidentally.
TAYLOR:
would say.
That was of the order of 10 billion dollars a year, I
,
EISENBUD:
Probably.
TAYLOR: That was what, a few percent, 10 percent?
would one say the Japanese gross national product was?
SCHULL:
I have no idea;
TAYLOR:
Waa it $15 billion a year?
EISENBUD:
early 50's.
What
It was a few hundred dollars a year per capita in the
‘
WARREN: We didn't have any drives to supply cooking utensils
like we did for the Germans and the Austrians.
TAYLOR:
It was a big chunk, wasn’t it?
WARREN: So, in that sense, our population didn't contribute directly to the recovery as they did with the Europeans.
pe ee Senne pee ee
eee,
TAYLOR: The question was how much of that would have happened
without outside assistance?
,