24. Shrines and Gas Stations in Post-Occupation Tokyo
This scene is in the heart of Tokyo, near the American embassy. The neighborhood shrine by the late 1940s had become surrounded by new commercial establishments. The CALTEX gasoline station visible opposite the shrine's torii was the first American-owned gasoline agency to open in the Occupation.

25. Temporary Shops in Meguro
This view is of the commercial center of the Meguro district in Tokyo. This area was completely destroyed in the fire-bombing during the war. By 1948, it was covered with temporary commercial establishments. By the 1970s and 1980s these temporary structures were completely replaced by large permanent buildings.

26. New Shops Opening Everyday
Another bombed-out street in Tokyo with new temporary shops. The shop in the foreground just opened as indicated by the circular garland made with imitation flowers out in front.

27. Doing Business Under Handicaps
A neighborhood grocery and fish store in a temporary structure while reconstruction of larger buildings proceeds on both sides. In the big cities that were extensively bombed, the earliest intensive reconstruction took place on the shopping streets rather than in the residential neighborhoods.

28. Grand Opening Day
The extended family of the owner (on the right, behind the two boys) gathers to dedicate the opening of a new retail establishment. The large, brilliantly colored false-flower medallions are typical. The older men wear the formal montsuki hakama dress; the older women wear formal dark-crested kimonos.

29. Maintaining Services in Commercial Areas
An older commercial area in the Shibuya district, with a mix of stores, restaurants, etc. This area was not destroyed in the fire bombing, although somewhat damaged and showing a lack of maintenance during the war. By 1999 Shibuya was a major, upscale commercial area, with multistory buildings and few of these small, traditional establishments.

30. Another View of Shibuya
The shoppers wear the wartime period heavy winter garments. The seated lady is selling lottery tickets, a device encouraged by the Occupation as a stimulus to the domestic economy.

31. Getting Under Way
This shopping area, in western outlying Tokyo, was completely destroyed in the fire-bombing. New shops with temporary construction were built with flimsy street lights, public telephones (small box-like structure in the middleground), and a post box placed temporarily on the raw dirt!

32. More Rebuilt Shops
More of the tentative reconstruction--and the garish advertising typical of these districts, representative of the intensity of the commercial revival.

33. Another New Retail and Service Enterprise
To the left is a neighborhood ice cream and refreshment parlor, with typically tentative, postwar jerry-built construction. To the right is a toy and novelty store.

34. More Rebuilt Shops
More of the tentative reconstruction--and the garish advertising typical of these districts, representative of the intensity of the commerical revival.

35. The Toy Shop
Another shopping scene. Note the youth facing the camera: he is wearing the standard public secondary school uniform. The stall is selling children's books and toys including toy samurai swords.

36. Shopping on the Ginza
Shopping at the sidewalk stalls in front of Matsuya on the Ginza (at the time the big store was temporarily the Tokyo PX_. These stalls were mostly operated by organized gangs and often sold illegal merchandise. They lined both sides of the Ginza for blocks, but they were all gone by the 1960s, due to new municipal regulations, and opposition from the reviving big, elegant Ginza stores. The man whose back faces the camera is wearing his Japanese army officer's boots.

37. World War II Soldiers Making a Living
Former World War II soldiers trying to make a living by shining shoes. Two of the men are wearing old army fatigue hats. Unemployment was high during this time and very little was being done for Japanese soldiers who were reminders of the former military regime and defeat in the war.

38. Women on the Construction Crew
This picture was taken in Atami--a resort and vacation coastal town on the Izu peninsula south of Tokyo. Atami was not firebombed--but like most of the older recreational and resort areas, was entering a period of economic boom. The picture shows women doing heavy labor, a hangover from the wartime period, when women workers replaced men in many home-front activities. Here they are erecting a new building-- actually a bar or tearoom--and they are performing like a crane--pulling ropes on pulleys to lift the cornices.

cf. photograph 207 for more information

39. The Beginnings of the Postwar Japanese Automobile Industry!
Well, not quite--actually contracts with the Occupation during the Korean War for the construction of jeeps and trucks, plus the repair of the American military vehicles of all kinds, had a bigger impact. However, this particular type of rebuilding and repairing castoff military jeeps and other Occupation vehicles, which were sold to Occupation people as personal vehicles, was an important training ground for young men in the neighborhoods, who could then get jobs in the rebuilt and modernized automobile factories. The prewar Japanese automobile industry was characterized by a plethora of small, alley garages, where new cars were assembled by self-trained mechanics. The site shown here was almost certainly occupied at one time by a samurai mansion--as indicated by the kura or treasure storehouse, now part of the office and shop.

40. Enterprising Marketeers
The clothing black market in action, in the famous Asakusa district (entertainment complexes). Immediately after the war, the Japanese military began dispersing some of the stores of clothing and other things, letting them enter the retail black market. Some Occupation personnel and U.S. military were implicated in the scheme, and were eventually tried and convicted. Not all the garments on sale here came from the military stores, and the black marketers were careful to mix black goods with legitimate stocks.

41. The Recycling of Wartime Residue
The metal cooking bowls being sold here were stamped out of aircraft aluminum left over from the war. This Japanese military sold it to the black market, small manufacturers and retailers. The sellers here are wearing parts of old Japanese Army uniforms. The Japanese military had stockpiled enormous quantities of metal, tools, uniforms and other necessities of warfare. During the Occupation much of this material found its way into the Black Market and there were several scandals involving U.S. Army personnel in these operations. The point is that the stockpiles were reserved by the Occupation for a more orderly dispersal system. But some enterprising Japanese and Americans managed to liberate large quantities of the goods; some of these people were allied to Tokyo criminal gangs.

42. At the Movies in Early 1950s
Motion picture entertainment in the early 1950s often reflected wartime themes--both U.S. and Japanese.

43. Making Movies
A Japanese movie crew filming a private-eye drama in a suburban neighborhood in the early 1950s.