Overseas Consultants Inc. was formed by the merger of eleven top U.S. engineering and management firms in the 1940s. In one of its first major undertakings, the company conducted a six-month industrial reparations survey of post-World War II Japan in 1947. It ultimately prepared a report for General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur's general view, however, was that Japan had already paid a heavy price, in that the war had totally shattered the Japanese economy, and Japan had lost all of the territories it had occupied in Manchuria, Korea, North China and the outer islands. (740.00119 Control (Japan)/3-2548, Report by the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Kennan), March 25, 1948).