Firm Level Decisions and Human Resource Development in an Islamic Economy

Abstract

Japan and Germany were totally destroyed during the Second World
War. Their industrial complexes lay in ruins after the devastating Allied
air bombardments. Both countries emerged from the war under Allied occupation
and with almost all of their manufacturing facilities and infrastructures,
such as transportation and telecommunications, paralyzed. A
picture of war-ravaged Japan appeared in the Nippon Times of 23
September 1946:
In Tokyo, 70 percent of the area of the city was destroyed, in
Osaka 80, in Nagoya 90. Transportation was limited to crowded,
creaky trains, hand-pulled two-wheel 'rear cam' designed to be
attached to bicycles and ox carts. At war's end, in all of Japan
there were only 41,000 motor vehicles, half of them inoperable
and almost all the rest powered by charcoal fumes. There were
no street lights at night and very few house lights.
Germany's infrastructure suffered a similar fate:
The condition of Germany at the end of World War II was desperate.
The country seemed to be one vast rubble dump. The
economy was in ruins; factories, railroads, ports, and canals had
been destroyed; and many millions had-lost their homes. Many ...