A further 2200 senior executives from 250 large companies were scheduled to be deprived of their appointments and prohibited from executive positions. Finally, the use of the old zaibatsu names was outlawed. This meant that even the old zaibatsu banks were forced to change their names: Mitsubishi Bank became Chiyoda Bank, Yasuda became Fuji Bank, Sumitomo became Osaka Bank and so on. Determined to embed these changes, SCAP prepared an Anti-Monopoly Act which was passed in 1947. This made holding companies illegal, restricted any bank from holding more than 5% in any company, and created a Fair Trade Commission to make sure that the zaibatsu did not re-emerge. By 1948, however, as communism spread across Europe and Asia, the Pentagon was already starting to see Japan as a useful buffer. Mao Tse-tung's overthrow of the nationalist government in China was followed within months by the outbreak of the Korean War. It was not just in the Pentagon that the need for a strong Japan with a democratic, non-communist government, started to make sense. As a result, American emphasis switched from dismantling the Japanese economy to rebuilding it. In 1952 a Security Pact between Japan and the US was signed and the last of the occupation forces left. Japan resumed its status as a sovereign state.In the event, fewer than 25 of the original list of zaibatsu companies had been broken up. Although some zaibatsu managers had been removed, their places were taken by new, younger managers steeped in the same tradition, whose loyalties remained the same. Contrary to American assumptions that ex-zaibatsu members would go their own way, the long-standing relationships between companies and individuals meant that there was every reason to stick together. Almost as soon as the occupation ended, the newly named Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) began to re-establish Japanese priorities. In 1953 SCAP's Trade Association Law was repealed and in 195...
