Rethink the History of my Country.

In my Japanese Literature class, we are reading a book called "The 20th Century For Me" written by Mr.Kato Shuichi. While reading this book, I often rethink the history of Japan in the 20th century.

The first thing I came across was Japan's rapid economic developement in post-world war. There must have been many factors which contributed to its development, but the book pointed out two factors, one of which was the Korean War.

Demand for many military supplies was dramatically increasing as Korean War started. As a result, the geographically closest country (Japan) prospered as it sold many military as well as food supplies to the US army.

Even though I am Japanese and of course stay on the Japanese side when a political issue occurs between Japan and Korea, I find this event very ironic. From 1910 to 1945, Korea was a part of Japan (Japan does not officially regard this as colonization, but I assume it was.) ,which generated many slaves in Korea. 5 years after its independence from Japan, Korea fell into a war; Japan started being economically developed because of its neighbour's war.