| | PEARLS AND OCCUPIED JAPAN |
 | | When the war ended and the Allied Occupation Forces came to Japan, they classified cultured pearls as “valuable and easily negotiable articles of commerce’ considering them “a potential avenue for illegal trading.” Measures were therefore taken to prevent unlawful trafficking. |
 | | Thus, during the early years of postwar Japan, all production of the Japanese cultured pearl industry was sold through the Army Exchange Service to the Occupation Forces or exported to the United States. |
 | | Between 1948 and the early 1960s, Japan’s Akoya industry was still living almost entirely off the production and export of “3.5 momme graduation necklaces?’ The most popular “graduations~’ delivered by the thousands, had a wholesale price of $7.00 per strand, the equivalent of ~2,520 at that time. |
| www.imperial-deltah.com /news2/pearls_and_occupied_japan.htm (693 words) |