An Inoffensive Rearmament (35 page)

CONCLUSION: A CRITIQUE

Having brought the Japanese rearmament program up to the uncertain present, I think it is desirable for us to review the achievements and mistakes that were made in the evolution of Japan's military establishment.

In making our judgments, one must never forget that during the critical period of the establishment and development of the NPR, Japan was an occupied country. Though the United States was tolerant and perhaps even benevolent, we nevertheless were in every sense the conquering power. Into 1952, not only did American troops occupy Japan, but the supreme commander's staff in Tōkyō continued to control the Japanese government. Civil affairs (CA) teams and counterintelligence corps (CIC) operators continued to observe and report on local Japanese institutions and governmental entities. In every aspect, Japanese sovereignty was delimited by American military power and surveillance.

Today, we can argue the legality of Japanese rearmament, but in July 1950 the need for a Japanese defense force was so urgent that neither the Japanese government nor the United States could allow any obstacles to stand in the way of organizing such a force. On the Japanese side, the government was not so much concerned with launching a rearmament program as in organizing a force that was immediately needed to defend the government and its institutions. For the United States, the NPR, though limited in its initial capabilities, provided sufficient protection for our dependents, and air, naval, and logistical bases in Japan permitted us to deploy all our ground forces to Korea. In brief, Japan needed the
NPR to defend the nation against insurrection and foreign attack, while the United States needed the NPR to protect our bases. Whether the NPR was adequate for the task is immaterial now, since it was never put to the test. The first achievement, then, was that the NPR filled a very vital need for Japan and the United States.

Whether it was so intended or not, the NPR became the first step in the rearmament of Japan. In this light, it is highly important that we examine any mistakes that may have been made in establishing the organization and evaluate contributions the NPR may have made to the future military forces of Japan.

In my opinion, which I held at the time the NPR was established and which today is reinforced by history, the constitutional question of rearmament was badly handled by the United States, the Japanese government, and the opposition parties in Japan. All three violated important moral principles for exigencies of the moment. All three are plagued today by the consequences of their shortsightedness. The successive conservative governments of Japan, by trampling upon their constitution, created for themselves difficult constitutional obstacles that have forced the development of a military establishment that exists in the twilight zone of legality, hobbled and weakened by that constitution and by the hostility of the people. The United States has become a foreign culprit, allying itself with the conservatives to circumvent the law. The opposition parties, especially the Socialists, in their pseudo-purity, have failed to face up to reality and, by leaning as partisans upon the constitution, have confused and soured the electorate.

To begin with, the United States was wrong to order the Japanese government to organize an army in violation of a constitution that our own commander dictated and that we all interpreted at the time as prohibiting the maintenance of an army, navy, or air force. Recent interpretations may or may not justify the view that the constitution permits self-defense forces or that neither General MacArthur nor the United States forced the no-war, no-arms provision in the constitution on the Japanese. The fact is that in 1950 in Japan, neither General MacArthur nor any official of the United States even hinted that Article 9 of the constitution meant anything other than a prohibition against war, war potential, and military forces. Moreover, no one at that time in Japan suggested that Article 9 had not been proposed to the Japanese by the supreme commander. It was not until three years later, when in November 1953, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, visiting Tōkyō, raised the question of American involvement in the disarmament of Japan. At that time, he said that “the United States did make a mistake [in disarming Japan] in 1946.”

There was no question in the minds of the American echelon that was organizing the NPR that we were building an army, yet we were required to camouflage the new force as a police organization. Officers in the NPR were denied military recognition and were designated inspectors, superintendents, and other silly ranks, while the soldiers were called patrolmen. It was a serious offense for an American officer to refer to the NPR as an army or to address Japanese officers as captain, major, or general. When we distributed American tanks to the NPR, the Japanese were admonished never to refer to these weapons as tanks but to call them special vehicles. This, as previously pointed out, caused ridiculous difficulties for those who had to prepare Japanese training manuals. The American advisers and the Japanese leaders were thus required to talk out both sides of their mouths.

Similarly, the prime minister and all the officers and officials of the NPR were seized with a sudden stupidity that was shameful for otherwise honorable, intelligent Japanese leaders. Time and again, top Japanese officials were compelled to deny in public, to their own people, that they were building an army, when the prime minister and the senior officials in the NPR knew without qualification that the force being developed was an army. At one point, the Japanese government contended that the constitution was not violated because the NPR was a self-defense force and not an army. This argument, too, was difficult for some people to swallow when the facts were that in 1946, while the constitution was being debated in the Diet, Prime Minister Yoshida himself, in response to questions in the Diet, clearly stated that the official position of the Japanese government at that time was that rearmament—even for self-defense—was prohibited by Article 9. Anyway, though the Japanese Defense Agency may be defended today as not violating the constitution because it is held to be a self-defense establishment, in 1950 the Yoshida government argued that the NPR was legal because it was not an army.
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Neither machine guns, mortars, rockets, tanks, artillery, nor aircraft made any difference in the arguments of the government when they were issued to the NPR. Amazingly, as I pointed out in a previous chapter, opinion polls showed that a large percentage of the Japanese people, especially women, believed—or at least said they believed—the prime minister when he declared that the NPR was not an army.

At the same time, the opposition parties in the Diet played a deplorable game of politics by refusing to acknowledge reality. The reality, apparent to the Socialists,
as well as to the conservative parties, was that after American ground forces were deployed to Korea, Japan was a gaping power vacuum. The government, whether it was to be Conservative or Socialist, could not exist without some kind of a force to protect it against insurrection, if not attack from abroad. Moreover, since it became evident early that despite the constitution and despite the most determined opposition, nothing would stop the Yoshida government from organizing a military force, the Socialists were in an untenable political position. After recognizing that they could not prevent the formation of the NPR, they should have accepted the situation and devoted their energies to controlling the way the NPR was organized. Had the Socialists, for example, agreed to a minor revision in the constitution in 1950 or 1951, they would have received the support of SCAP in any efforts that they might have made to limit the revisions. At the time the NPR was being established, the occupation forces were still in control of Japan, and it is inconceivable that at that time the United States would have permitted the conservative parties to amend drastically the American-inspired constitution. From a practical political point of view, the Socialists had little to lose and much to gain by supporting a reasonable revision of the constitution. By opposing revision of Article 9, they assumed a rigid political stance, confused the people, and sacrificed for years any chance to head a government in Japan.

The political struggle in 1950 between the Socialists and the conservative parties generated such violent distrust that meaningful dialogue between “One Man” Yoshida and the Socialists was impossible. Yoshida publicly lumped the Socialist opposition with the Communists while the Socialists regarded Yoshida as an enemy of the people. Unlike the Republicans and the Democrats in the United States, who on many domestic issues fight to the bitter end but who resolve differences on national defense and foreign policy, Japanese political leaders seemed devoid of any disposition to reach a compromise. The issue of rearmament, so vital to the nation, deserved the most thoughtful consideration of all the politicians. Watching the political action in 1950, however, I gathered that the conservative leaders wanted the Socialists to have nothing to do with building the defense forces and the Socialists, locked in their ideological dilemma, refused to consider the critical international situation that faced the country.

The basic moral responsibility, nevertheless, seemed to rest with the United States. Legally, and in accordance with international agreements, General MacArthur, as the supreme commander of the Allied powers, was placed in Japan to
carry out the will of these powers. After the occupation forces decided that Japan was to be permitted to establish a military defense force, the United States, as the principal occupying power, had a joint obligation with Japan to ensure that the Japanese government executed our directive in compliance with the constitution. No sophistry can now be invented to justify the United States' joining the conservatives in disregarding the Japanese constitution. As an occupying power, we had an obligation to uphold and support that constitution. To argue, as some did at the time, that Great Britain, France, Australia, Nationalist China, and other Allied powers would not agree to rearmament of Japan was to raise the following conundrum: If the United States could induce most of its former allies to fight in Korea, it is inconceivable that we could not convince these same nations that it was necessary to organize a Japanese force to protect United Nations bases in Japan.

Though it would have been difficult, the supreme commander had the authority and the prestige to call in Prime Minister Yoshida and appropriate Socialist leaders to acquaint them with the military situation facing Japan and to urge them, for the good of the nation, to build a limited military force. Since Article 9 and certain other provisions in the constitution operated against a viable military establishment, the supreme commander should have insisted on a limited revision of the constitution. Unfortunately, the supreme commander allowed Yoshida to convince him that the prime minister did not need the support of the minority parties in the Diet for implementing legislation. Moreover, the Americans and the government wanted to avoid telling the opposition anything about the rearmament program. This unprincipled approach to a problem that was most vital to both the United States and Japan was unworthy of American democracy.

America, in the interest of Japanese and our own requirements, had a unique opportunity to open channels to the parties on the left in Japan. This, of course, does not mean collaboration with the Japan Communist Party, but it was important for the United States not to isolate itself from the Socialists and other opposition parties, which we Americans should have realized would be around today and may tomorrow be heading the Japanese government. This shortsighted political rigidity on the American side in 1950 created difficult obstacles for our national interests in the Far East. I was repeatedly shocked at the political ignorance displayed by our military commanders in Japan. Time and again, when the Japanese trade union members and Socialists marched in Ōsaka under their
red flags, the American division commander and his provost marshal went out of their minds screaming about those “damn communists.”

Whatever reasons may be ascribed to our conditioning and that of the Japanese government to violate the constitution, the results of that action are disturbing. The NPR in the 1950s, and the Self-Defense Forces today, did not and do not now have the enthusiastic support of the Japanese; the people remain suspicious. In addition, the legal obstacles of the constitution have blocked healthy development of the military establishment, undermining its legal base and weakening its professional structure. Most significant, our close association with the conservative elements has alienated intellectuals, progressives, students, and trade union members who initially turned to us for guidance and understanding.

No one, neither the Americans nor the successive conservative governments and the Socialists and other opposition parties, can point with any pride to the way they jointly and individually handled the constitutional question regarding the rearmament of Japan.

Without question an equally important problem, which deserved the searching attention of all the politicians and the Japanese people, was the matter of selection and training of the leadership for the future military forces. Japan had suffered a devastating war precisely because the leadership of the Imperial forces had gone astray. Yet the tremendously important questions regarding qualification, selection criteria, promotion requirements, and training policies for the officers of the new force were never considered by the Diet and never debated in public. All criteria for officer qualification and development was left to the determination of the cabinet, that is, in the control of the party in power. Whereas the U.S. Senate confirms original appointments and all promotion of officers, giving both the Democrats and the Republicans an opportunity to consider the qualifications of each new candidate for military commission and the records of the officers being promoted, the Diet has no such authority. The decision to induct former Imperial officers, the timing of their recruitment, and their rank and qualification criteria were all matters determined by the prime minister with the help of his advisers. Unquestionably, the former military officers brought valuable skills and knowledge to the NPR. Nevertheless, their selection, future training, and schooling deserved the closest supervision by an appropriate committee of the Diet.