the confiscation and shipment of Japanese war record paintings

confiscated.
On 1 October 1951, the Department of Military History in Washington, DC acknowledged that
they received the shipment of Japanese war record paintings from Japan. However, the documents
accompanying the shipment of paintings were incomplete and do not reflect the exact number of
paintings in the shipment. Thus, the department requested the Occupation officials concerned with the
confiscation to furnish them a complete listing of the paintings shipped. 18 As a response, Office of the
Chief Engineer sent the shipping list previously mentioned in this paper. Moreover, the office also sent
a set of 153 photographs of the confiscated paintings to accompany the shipping lists, plus the
condition list of each painting in custody. These photographs were taken 2 days before the activities
were started to ship the paintings to the US. It was already established that shipment started on 26 July
1951. 19 Thus, the photographs from which the previously introduced 1951 list was constructed from
can be said to be the same set of photographs sent to Military History. However, as was stated earlier,
the number of paintings in that particular set of photographs totaled 154 items. 20
Part of this confusion on the exact number of paintings can be attributed to the fact that details
regarding the confiscation of the works, from 1945 up to the middle of 1946, was not very clear to the
Occupation personnel by 1951. In a meeting between the Office of the Chief Engineer, the Religion
Cultural Resources Division of the Civil Information and Education Section and the Headquarters and
Services Command to discuss the final disposition of the paintings, it was stated that none of the
participants in the meetings were well-informed about the subject at hand. 21 Whatever information they
had was taken from fragmentary documents. Moreover, the impetus for a review of the confiscated
paintings seemed to have stemmed from the clamor that the Allies received requests for the release of
the space in which the confiscated paintings were being stored at the Tokyo Municipal Museum. The
petitions came from various Japanese art groups who desired to use the museum's space for their
groups' exhibitions.
The three now missing paintings and the four paintings that were not in any of the Occupationera
lists but are now part of the NMMA catalogue begs the following questions. First, what was the
actual number of paintings confiscated during the Occupation period? Second, are there still more
18 “Shipment of Japanese War Paintings,” 21 October 1951, microfiche, AG (C) 02214, Modern Japanese Political History
Materials Room, National Diet Library.
19 “Shipment of Japanese War Paintings,” 13 October 1951, microfiche, CIE (C) 06719, ibid.
20 If one was to count the paintings by their FEC numbers, the total would be 153. This is because there were two works
sharing the same FEC number. These works are catalog number 63, “Battle off Nicholson, Hong Kong” by Miyamoto
Saburō and catalog number A-6, “On Army Day” by Ōta Kijirō.
21 “Conference Report,” 27 April 1951, microfiche, CIE (A) 08580, Modern Japanese Political History Materials Room,
National Diet Library.
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