An Inoffensive Rearmament (37 page)

Editor's Preface

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“Letter from Douglas MacArthur to Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, July 8, 1950,” in
Correspondence between General MacArthur, Prime Minister Yoshida and Other High Japanese Officials, 1945–1951,
ed. Rinjiro Sodei (Tōkyō: Hosei University Press, 2000), 203–4.

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The at-large seat for Connecticut traditionally went to a candidate of Polish descent. The at-large system was abolished by Congress in 1967.

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E-mail correspondence from Carol Reidy to Robert D. Eldridge, April 22, 2012. Unless otherwise cited, personal and family information about Kowalski has been provided by Carol and her brother, Barry, in a series of e-mails and other interactions between April and December 2012.

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Furanku Kowarusukii,
Nihon Saigunbi: Beigunji Komondan Bakuryocho no Kiroku
(The Rearmament of Japan: The Records of the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Military Advisory Group) (Tōkyō: Chūō Kōron Shinsha, 1999), 4–5.

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Katsuyama Kinjiro, “Yakusha Maegaki (Translator's Preface),” in Kowarusukii,
Nihon Saigunbi,
9.

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Carol thinks it might have been someone from the Japanese Embassy in Washington, D.C., who assisted with locating a publisher, but Katsuyama may have made the connection for him.

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Furanku Kowarusukii,
Nihon Saigunbi: Beigunji Komondan Bakuryocho no Kiroku
(The Rearmament of Japan: The Records of the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Military Advisory Group) (Tōkyō: Simul, 1969).

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Katsuyama, “Yakusha Maegaki,” 8–9.

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An incomplete first chapter of the manuscript was donated with the rest of the papers to the Library of Congress, but for some reason, the whole manuscript was not. The original was likely provided to the translator to work from, and a copy resided with his daughter, who generously shared the manuscript with me through her brother, a well-known prosecutor in the Department of Justice specializing in civil rights cases. Carol believes there had to be more copies than just the one she has. She thinks her mother had one but supposes it must have been inadvertently discarded during house cleanings or moves. Barry added that since the manuscript was addressed to Carol, their father did not keep it in his own papers and thus it was not a part of the collection given to the Library of Congress. A former State Department official who wrote a book about the occupation period stated that the English version of the memoir is available in the National Diet Library (Kokkai Toshokan) in Tōkyō, but that appears to be incorrect. See Richard B. Finn,
Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 367 n28.

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The translator also published the first one in the series as Robert D. Eldridge, ed.,
Secret Talks between Tokyo and Washington: The Memoirs of Miyazawa Kiichi, 1949–1954
(Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2007).

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See Robert D. Eldridge and Charles Tatum, eds.,
Fighting Spirit: The Memoirs of Yoshitaka Horie and the Battle of Iwo Jima
(Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2011).

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Undated essay by Barry Kowalski shared with editor.

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Undated essay by Barry Kowalski shared with editor.

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“Ex-Congressman Kowalski Dies,”
Washington Post,
October 15, 1974. The “peacemonger” label was possibly related to his efforts to seek controls on nuclear weapons and reduce waste in military manpower. In one unpublished collection of random thoughts, he wrote, “No man or group of the ancients or in Roman times possessed the power of the President of the United States or of the controlling group in the Soviet Union to give the command to destroy not only his enemies but his own country, his own countrymen, and the world. The power to unleash a nuclear holocaust which would eradicate millions of human beings, destroy life itself, and, that which may not be destroyed would be changed into horrible proportions. The men of dignitas
today truly possess the power of anti-Christ.” Untitled, unpublished, undated ten-page document shared with the author by Barry Kowalski, written by his father on the latter's thoughts about ethics, politics, international affairs, and man's relationship with God.

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“Ex-Congressman Kowalski Dies.”

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For more on the riots and the cancellation of the Eisenhower visit, see George R. Packard,
Protest in Tokyo: The Security Treaty Crisis of 1960
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1966).

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“Letter from Frank Kowalski to President Eisenhower, June 29, 1960,” Central Files, 611.94/62860, Record Group 59, National Archives II, College Park, Md. Kowalski received an immediate, if pro forma, reply from Jack Z. Anderson, the administrative assistant to the president, noting that “the thought which prompted you to make this suggestion is appreciated. You may be sure it will have appropriate consideration.” It is unclear what the final disposition of the letter and suggestion was, but Eisenhower was not particularly close with MacArthur, for whom he had once worked, for many years. For a recent book on the latter years of Eisenhower's life, see David Eisenhower,
Going Home to Glory: A Memoir of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010). In it, the reader learns that the radical Japanese student organization, Zengakuren, had announced in March 1961 it would not demonstrate again if Eisenhower chose to visit Japan in his capacity as former president of Columbia University. He never made it to Japan.

Chapter 1. Grace of Heaven

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Koku
was a historic measurement for rice used in Japan. A
koku
was the equivalent of 150 kilograms, or 330 pounds, of rice, or about the amount an average person ate in one year then.

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“Old” in the sense that Kowalski had previously served in the Ōsaka area.

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An
ukase
was a decree or edict issued in Imperial Russia by the czar.

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For more, see William F. Dean,
General Dean's Story of His Three Years Captivity in North Korea
(New York: Viking Press, 1954).

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One might include the phrase “even against his own earlier wishes” here because MacArthur had directed in early 1946 that Japan adopt a clause in
its constitution that said, “War as a sovereign right of the nation is abolished. Japan renounces it as an instrument for settling its disputes and even for preserving its own security.” See chapter 4.

Chapter 2. Japan before Korea

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George F. Kennan, who was the first director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State, had similar ideas, including the neutralization of Japan upon stabilizing it internally. See George F. Kennan,
Memoirs: 1925–1950
(Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1967), chapter 8, and his subsequent
Memoirs: 1950–1963
(Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1972), chapter 3.

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For more on letters, petitions, and gifts to MacArthur, see Sodei Rinjirō,
Dear General MacArthur: Letters from the Japanese during the American Occupation
(Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).

Chapter 3. Basic Plan

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This school was known as Tōkyō Kōtō Shōsen Gakkō in Japanese and was located in Ecchūjima, Tōkyō.

Chapter 4. Constitution Bans War

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Atcheson died in August 1947 in a plane crash off the coast of Oahu on a trip to the United States and was succeeded by his deputy, William J. Sebald.

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The SWNCC was created in December 1944 and is considered the forerunner to the National Security Council, established in 1947.

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The Japanese name of Matsumoto's committee was Kenpō Mondai Chōsai Iinkai. The committee was formed on October 25, 1945. There was no official disbanding of it per se, but by February 1946, Matsumoto's work was essentially superseded by the draft prepared by MacArthur's staff.

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Takayanagi's committee was established on June 11, 1956, within the cabinet. It was made up of up to fifty members, thirty of which were members of the Diet and twenty were outside scholars and intellectuals. It submitted its report on the constitution on July 3, 1964, and disbanded a year later. For more on the committee, see Harold S. Quigley, “Revising the Japanese Constitution,”
Foreign Affairs
38, no. 10 (October 1959): 112–20. Shidehara died in March 1951, so he was unavailable to answer any questions the committee may have had for him.

Chapter 5. Yoshida's Views

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Tabi
is a sturdy Japanese sock. When elegant, it is used in the home. It is also used at the construction sites in place of Western-style boots, allowing workers to be much more agile.

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Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai was assassinated by eleven junior naval officers on May 15, 1932, in an attempted coup known as the “May 15 Incident.” They also attacked, among other places, the residence of the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Nobuaki Makino, who was Prime Minister Yoshida's father-in-law. The plotters were only mildly punished. This incident followed the March assassination of a former finance minister and head of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Rikken Minseitō), Inoue Junnosuke.

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There are many books in Japanese about Yoshida. The only biography of him in English is John Dower's
Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience, 1878–1954
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988). It stops short, however, of covering his entire life, including his post-prime-minister years (he lived until 1967) and in this sense is incomplete. Fortunately, Yoshida left several writings. An abbreviated version of his 1957 memoir (
Kaisō Jūnen,
or Reflections on Ten Years) was translated into English by his son and published as
The Yoshida Memoirs: The Story of Japan in Crisis
(New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1962). An expanded version was edited thirty years later by Hiroshi Nara titled
Yoshida Shigeru: The Last Meiji Man
(Boulder, Colo.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).

Chapter 9. Leaders Fashion Armies

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In his original manuscript, Kowalski references the Vietnam War and the challenges the Lyndon B. Johnson administration was having: “Other wise, why do the Viet Cong in ragged pajamas, without tanks, without artillery, and without air support fight unto the death the best American troops we can muster, while our South Vietnamese allies, equipped with most modern weapons we can produce, prefer, like Ferdinand the Bull, to sniff flowers?” Because they were not directly related to Japan and the NPR, the editor decided to remove those last few lines from the actual text and include them here as a footnote.

Chapter 10.
Seishin Kyōiku

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One of the most famous books on the way of the Japanese warrior is Inazō Nitobe,
Bushidō: The Soul of Japan,
first published in 1900 for the benefit of non-Japanese readers.

Chapter 15. Conclusion

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The JDA became the Ministry of Defense in January 2007.

INDEX