The End of the War and the San Francisco Peace Accord

In 1945, after the defeat of Japan, the Allied Powers GHQ banned Japanese armaments completely. Of course, aircraft-related research was prohibited by the Potsdam Declaration. Aeronautical specialists who had been engaged in aircraft design and fabrication during the War were scattered to more basic regions or comparatively close fields in academic sense. Itokawa expressed his thoughts this way:

"Since my equation in those days used to be Itokawa = a ircraft, now I got Itokawa - a ircraft = 0. I felt my very existence had become zero."

Pulling himself together after the War, Itokawa tackled acoustic engineering including research into violins. At the same time, he began the pioneering development of medical electronic instruments such as electronarcosis. He is the first man in Japan to complete an electroencephalograph and to create an artificial heart using duralumin.

In 1952, when the San Francisco Peace Accord came into effect, jet planes were to mark the beginning of a new era. Former aeronautical engineers rushed back into jet-plane research against the new background of academic freedom. But returning to aircraft research was far from Itokawa's true desire.

From January, 1953, Itokawa stayed in the United States for six months to publish his achievements on medical instruments. In the US, Itokawa came across many books regarding space development.

He writes: "I found a newly published book entitled 'Space Medicine' which was a great shock to me, because I at once realized that, if medical doctors were discussing human physiology in space, their fundamental engineering principles of rocket flight must be far ahead of us."

When Itokawa came back to Japan, he was a pioneering engineer with a fascination for space flight.