NOTE:Publication of the Occupation Diary, First Cavalry Division (1945-1950) will appear, as installments, on the Historian Corner on a continuing basis as time and space permits. Each installment will be subsequently moved to the History Annex Page when a new installment is published. Therefore, if an installment is missed during the period it was published, it may be viewed on the History Annex Page.

Continued: Installment 3:

On September 25, 1945, there began a great shifting and turnover of personnel which continued thence forward and added considerably to the difficulties of carrying out the occupation mission. Men with high adjusted service rating scores were transferred to the 43rd Infantry Division for shipment home and discharge. Later, as other units were inactivated or deployed to the States, many low point men were turned over to the First Cavalry Division to complete their tours of duty. However, these additions and the trickle of replacements which came directly from the United States did not equal the division's losses through re deployment. During the period from July 1, 1945 to January 31, 1947, 32,494 personnel were redeployed to the States from the First Cavalry Division, a turnover of approximately three times the authorized strength of the division.

On September 30, 1945, one of the major tasks in the early stages of the occupation was performed by the 2nd Cavalry Brigade when it closed 21 banking institutions in Tokyo and seized all records, pending an investigation of foreign financial activities by these firms. Twenty-one teams consisting of guards, interpreters and counter-intelligence corps personnel descended simultaneously on the 21 installations and effected the closing without incident.

As the First Cavalry Division completed its first month of occupation duties, the demilitarization of Japanese war industries was in full swing. During the ensuing year the major effort of the division was devoted toward locating,inventorying, and assisting in the destruction of arms, ammunition and military supplies.Factories which had been producing for the Japanese war machines were seized and either destroyed or held for reparations. As the arsenals, military posts and airfields were cleaned up,the search was broadened to include numerous caves, mountain hideouts, and other points to which the war material had been dispersed.

Early in the conflict,the Japanese had begun to make provision for the movement of their war industries to underground retreats.The destruction of their great cities by aerial bombing,during The spring of 1945, had hastened this procedure. The dispersion of war plants and stocks of vital material continued right up until the time American troops had actually landed in Japan. When the cavalry patrols searched the countryside, they found thousands of caves which literly honey-combed the landscape. Many of them contained nothing, but but in a great number of others, caches of arms,ammunition and machinery were found and seized.Complete underground factories with ventilating and sewage systems, dormitories,and offices were discovered.The war had ended before most of them could get into production.The demilitarization became a grim game of hide and seek. At the beginning of the occupation, schools, temples, and shrines were spared from search by the occupation forces,but after it became known that certain of these institutions were being used for the storage of munitions, a systematic and revealing survey was made. After a year and a half of occupation, unreported and undestroyed implements of war were still being turned up in small amounts.