ll trained cadre of blue-collar workers for the soon-to-emerge growing manufacturing sector (Dower, 1990, p. 54). The war-time industrial complex was initially scheduled to be destroyed or shipped to other countries as war reparations. This policy conflicted with the goal of making Japan a self-sustaining country. Most of the industrial plants made use of sophisticated equipment which other country's economies did not have the ability to exploit. Rumors spread, about steel plants rusting on docks and cement being left out in the open and exposed to rain, effectively destroying both the steel plant and the concrete (Passin, 1990, p. 111). The Japanese needed these plants converted to peace-time manufacturing plants. Many of these plants turned to producing cameras, watches, and binoculars. Manufacturing plants which had produced uniforms could now produce civilian clothing for the population. Military truck facilities turned to producing automobiles. The United States chose not to enforce the payment of reparations in kind that had been stipulated in the Potsdam Declaration. This was a choice which General MacArthur made; without these factories, as the basis for a peace-time economy, the Japanese economy would not have been able to expand and grow. These factories were critical for the economy to gr
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