Body Constitution of Young Male Workers in Kyoto, Japan in the World War II Period

It is well known that the body size of young people may be reduced during wartime and that it was especially true during the World War II. For example, the reduction in growth was remarkable in primary school children in Sendai, Japan, in the 1940s 1). Records of body measurements of working populations are however extremely scarce, possibly because they were destroyed during the wartime. We have succeeded in locating a report by Miyagi et al. 2). on the health status of young male workers in the city of Kyoto as measured during the World War II, which was submitted in 1943 to the Government of Japan. It is the purpose of the present communication to make the data 2) open to the public and to evaluate the observation in comparison with the findings in counterpart current populations. Materials The data reported by Miyagi et al. 2) included the height and the weight of workers in small-to medium-scale industries in Kyoto. The measurements were repeated at least three times, once each in April and October 1942 and then in April 1943, on about 1,500 male workers at 14 to 24 years of age, a majority (80.2%) being 15-19 year-old. There were small variations in the number of the examinees depending on the occasions of the measurements, yet it appeared quite likely that the same workers were examined on the three occasions and that the variation was attributable to the absence from the health examination. The records on height and weight are reproduced in Tables 1 and 2, respectively. The body mass index {BMI or weight (in kg)/[height (in m)]^2 } was calculated by the present authors using average weight and height in the absence of data on individuals.