The Syonan Central Telegraph and Telephone Office took over the Oriental Telephone and Electric Company (OTEC). At the beginning of the war, as many as 5,000 telephones and almost all the switchboards installed in subscribers’ premises were destroyed. The Japanese dismantled about half of the main telephone exchange equipment and destroyed the external telephone lines. When OTEC took back control over the telephone system from the Military Administration on 1 April 1946, only around 7,000 out of the pre-war 11,300 telephones survived.
