Urbanization in Southeast Asia during the World War II Japanese Occupation and Its Aftermath

Gregg Huff and Gillian Huff

No _128, Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics

Abstract: This working paper analyzes demographic change in Southeast Asia's main cities during and soon after the World War II Japanese occupation. We argue that two main patterns of population movements are evident. In food-deficient areas, a search for food security typically led to large net inflows to main urban centres. By contrast, an urban exodus dominated in food surplus regions because the chief risk was to personal safety, especially from Japanese and Allied bombing. Black markets were ubiquitous, and essential to sustaining livelihoods in cities with food-deficit hinterlands. In Rangoon and Manila, wartime population fluctuations were enormous. Famines in Java and northern Indochina severely impacted Jakarta and Hanoi through inflows of people from rural areas. In most countries, the war's aftermath of refugees, revolution and political disruption generated major rural-urban population relocations. Turmoil in the 1940s had the permanent consequences of augmenting the primacy of Southeast Asia's main cities and promoting squatter settlement.

Keywords: urbanization; Southeast Asia; famine; World War II; entitlements; Japan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N15 N90 N95 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-04-24
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