Abstract
The Technology Board (Gijutsuin) was established as a central organization for the mobilization of science and technology in World War II Japan. It is well known that the Technology Board gave priority to the aviation technology to meet the Army's requests. The preceding studies have paid attention to the role of the technocrats in making the board and depicted that the Army's requests "distorted" their original plan. This paper deals with the Army's plans for advancement of civil aviation in 1930s. The Army made the plan for "the Ministry of Aviation (Kokusho)" and "the Central Aeronautical Institute". The Navy and the Department of Communications (Teishinsho) opposed the plan from political motivation, so the Army's plan has never come into existence. The Navy and the Department of Communications set up together the National Central Aeronautical Institute, and the Army left out of scheme. To recapture the initiative, the Army asserted that the Technology Board should give priority to the aviation technology, and that the National Central Aeronautical Institute should be placed under the control of the Technology Board. The view that the Army's requests "distorted" the original plan by the technocrats is, therefore, one-sided way of looking at things.
