Supreme Commander (11 page)

Back in America there was little love lost by the American public for “the Japs.” Americans were outraged by the infamous Pearl Harbor attack and the harsh treatment of American war prisoners. A November 1944 Gallup poll showed 13 percent of Americans favored killing
all
the people in Japan after war ended. Even the
New York Times
ran articles on the feasibility of eliminating the Japanese race. Another survey three months before the surrender showed that some 33 percent of Americans were in favor of executing the emperor with no trial, while a majority favored convicting him as a war criminal. In Washington, Representative John Rankin spoke of the Japanese as “savage apes,” and Georgia's distinguished senator Richard B. Russell Jr. called them “bestial.”

Early in the occupation the Japanese premier, Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni, had caused an uproar in SCAP when he said: “If you in the United States will forget Pearl Harbor, we will forget Hiroshima.” The Japanese were astonished at the anger this remark stirred in the Americans: Japan had always started hostilities by surprise attack. To people with a militarist mind-set, Pearl Harbor was normal. What was on trial, in the Japanese view, was not responsibility but defeat. MacArthur's job would be to change this amoral thinking.

Under MacArthur, Hirohito would be spared, but not the militarists. “The surrender terms are not soft, and they won't be applied in kid-glove fashion,” MacArthur announced. “The overall objectives for Japan have been clearly outlined in the surrender terms and will be accomplished in an orderly, concise, and comprehensive way.”

Immediately after the
Missouri
signing, MacArthur issued an order for the arrest of forty top generals, the most prominent of whom was Hideki Tojo, prime minister from 1941 to 1944. On September 8, the day MacArthur arrived in Tokyo, Tojo was arrested. To beat the rap, he shot himself in the chest but missed his heart. After a life-saving operation by American surgeons, Tojo was in the hospital recovering. Among his other medical needs was a custom-fitted set of dentures—a present from the United States government. Two American military dentists undertook the task, secretly etching on the patient's teeth three words in Morse code: “Remember Pearl Harbor.”

PART TWO

VIGOROUS EXECUTION

9

Organizing for Success

I
N THE SPRING
of 1945, students at a special Civil Affairs Training School at Harvard University played policy games by composing handbooks for a hypothetical military government under “General MacNimitz”—a compound of the two leading contenders for the job after the successful invasion of Japan. Nimitz or MacArthur would suspend the operations of the national government and replace its top-level officers with Americans. Members of the imperial household, including the emperor, would be taken into custody.

Just because MacArthur had had a good meeting with the emperor didn't mean he had solved the emperor problem. The Joint Chiefs asked MacArthur if it was possible to combine the imperial institution with democratic government. He responded that it was possible, so long as great care was taken. Putting the emperor on trial, satisfying though it might be for most people in America, would doom the occupation's prospects. “Underground chaos and guerilla warfare in mountainous and outlying regions would result,” and would require a million troops to maintain order.

That kind of number quickly ended the discussion. It was to be the best-kept secret of the entire six and a half years that America ruled Japan: its vulnerability. Military occupations are extremely labor-intensive. One can never have enough troops, meaning that much of an occupation's success depends on political relations with the subject population. This was particularly true in the case of Japan. After a huge world war the U.S. Army was under relentless pressure to release troops from duty. The number of troops available to MacArthur would decrease over time—just when most military occupations would need more troops, not less. Given the winding down of the number of American troops and the first priority being Europe, few troops would be available for a surge should he need it.

How long would the occupation have to last? Some members of Congress said possibly as long as twenty years. MacArthur was more specific. According to his preliminary plan for occupying Japan, known as Operation Blacklist, the military occupation would be for five years and consist of three phases: one year for post-surrender consolidation, three years for demilitarization/disarmament, and one year for peace treaty and withdrawal of military forces from Japan. This proved to be a realistic prediction. By 1950 the United States was ready to end the occupation; the only reason it stayed until early 1952 was international tensions and the 1950 outbreak of war in Korea.

Generals often do their most significant work before the major fighting begins. When it does start, they must have a sixth sense—the mysterious ability to sense battlefield developments. Both traits would serve MacArthur well in his peacetime role as supreme commander. He had strong views about what needed to be done concerning the emperor, political reform, the Japanese constitution, Japanese militarism, and humanitarian aid. He would keep the Japanese government in place and have SCAP function in a supervisory role rather than implement the orders itself. SCAP was to be an advisory organization rather than an executive one (akin to a staff as opposed to a line function). Demobilization, construction, transport, education, health care, banking, and other basic functions—to the fullest extent possible—would be carried out by the Japanese themselves. Speed was of the essence. The faster the Americans got out of Japan, the better. Once Japan fulfilled the requirements of the Potsdam Declaration, there would be little left for a military force to do. Prolonging the occupation would only give rise to a “colonial” psychology and stir local resentment.

Make no mistake about it, thought MacArthur, the occupation must be comprehensive. The British begged to differ. When shown an early draft of U.S. policy, they argued that all the Allies had to do was occupy major military points and put on occasional demonstrations of military power. Sir George Sansom, a leading authority on Japanese history, claimed that sweeping reforms were not needed to convert Japan into an acceptably democratic state. MacArthur, who fancied himself a man with a keen understanding of the Oriental mind, disagreed totally.

Unlike Eisenhower in Germany, MacArthur encouraged his soldiers to mingle and fraternize with the occupied population, and to give out chocolates to children. The Japanese people, surprised by such openness and friendliness, called them “the happy soldiers.” “Wherever Americans went,” observed Elizabeth Vining, the American writer hired by the emperor to tutor the crown prince, “the children crowded about, shy, curious, friendly, smiling. Children reflect what they hear at home. If there was hatred and bitterness and talk of revenge in the family circle, the children would not swarm with obvious delight about the foreigner.”

They were our best ambassadors, MacArthur said of his 500,000 soldiers (eventually reduced to 118,000 in 1948, and 75,000 in 1951). The supreme commander and his officials ran a tight ship, brooking no abuse or offense to Japanese dignity. Knowing how short of food most Japanese people were, the supreme commander forbade soldiers to accept invitations to eat in Japanese homes. Japanese food was reserved for the Japanese. If an American soldier was invited to a Japanese home for dinner, he must bring his own food and he must be back by eleven o'clock. The only cultural items allowed to be purchased by American servicemen were discarded samurai swords; everything else must remain in Japan; there was to be no plundering whatsoever of the country's artistic heritage. When a soldier broke into a Japanese teahouse, MacArthur had him sentenced to ten years' hard labor. Any American caught slapping a Japanese citizen automatically got a five-year jail sentence. When the newspapers publicized this draconian ruling, the Japanese were stunned that a conqueror could be so tough on itself. “That,” marveled one Japanese man to an American journalist, “was when we knew we had lost the war.”

Equally correct behavior was expected of the Japanese, and Americans let them know it. When the emperor tried to curry favor with an important official from Washington by giving him a solid gold cigarette case with an inscription, the official returned it immediately. When a Japanese government minister visiting Japanese being held in prison by SCAP stated, “I wish to lodge a formal complaint—there is no heat whatsoever in this prison,” General Eichelberger responded: “I fully agree, it is a disgraceful state of affairs. You fellows should have had heating installed when our boys were prisoners here.”

As in any occupation there were the inevitable incidents of rowdy behavior and a few cases of rape or theft by American soldiers, but by and large the impression they made was very favorable. Likewise, the cooperation and hospitality displayed by the subject Japanese tended to be exemplary.

By treating the Japanese with magnanimity, MacArthur sought to persuade them of the error of their ways in accepting feudalism and militarism. Observed Masuo Kato, one of the two Japanese reporters at the surrender ceremony on the
Missouri
:

We Japanese were poorly led, but we cannot ascribe our misguidance to the militarists and statesmen alone. We were lacking in a fundamental quality as a people, the understanding of the importance of individual liberty and the will to protect it. In its place was only a feudalistic submission to power, and in that respect the whole nation must accept responsibility for the war.

Added the Japanese historian Toshio Nishi: “The Japanese, accepting defeat, assumed the conqueror must have won because of superior values and institutions.”

Every organization begins with a mission statement. MacArthur never put it in writing, but the closest he came to expressing one was when he met with an American visitor shortly after arriving in Japan: “We are trying to sow an idea—the idea of freedom, the freedom that roots in religion. If you sow an idea, an army can't stop it. Secret societies can't stop it. What we want to do is to release into the life of these millions of people the idea of freedom and democracy.”

 

“FROM THE MOMENT
of my appointment, I had formulated the policies I intended to follow, implementing them through the Emperor and the machinery of the imperial government,” MacArthur wrote in his memoir.

This is only somewhat true. He did develop the specific actions, rules, and regulations. But he already had the Potsdam Declaration of July 26 and a September 6 policy statement known as United States Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan (SWNCC 150/4). The main operating document was a November 3 memorandum from the Joint Chiefs known as JCS 1380/15, acknowledged by MacArthur as “one of the great state papers of modern history.” Written by Gen. John Hilldring, an aide to Army Chief of Staff George Marshall who later became assistant secretary of state, JCS 1380/15 is organized into two sections, “General and Political,” and “Economic, Civilian Supply and Relief, Financial.” This 7,500-word document contains fifty specific directives relating to myriad items like dissolution of paramilitary organizations, emphasis on local government, closure of military research laboratories, authorization of banknotes and legal tender, censorship, protection of cultural and religious objects, repatriation of Korean citizens, and foreign exchange controls.

It takes nothing away from MacArthur to give Washington full credit for the planning it did. In accepting these policies (which he agreed with), MacArthur became responsible for putting them into action—and modifying them where necessary.

Several items relating to overall policy are worth noting:

#2: . . . Unless you deem it necessary, or are instructed to the contrary, you will not establish direct military government, but will exercise your powers so far as compatible with the accomplishment of your mission through the Emperor of Japan or through the Japanese Government.

#3a: . . . The United States desires that the Japanese Government conform as closely as may be to principles of democratic self-government, but it is not the responsibility of the occupation forces to impose on Japan any form of government not supported by the freely expressed will of the people.

#4c: . . . The policy is to use the existing form of government, not to support it. Changes in the direction of modifying the feudal and authoritarian tendencies of the government are to be permitted and favored.

#4e: . . . You will make it clear that military occupation of Japan is effected in the interests of the United Nations and is necessary for the destruction of Japan's power of aggression and her war potential and for the elimination of militarism and militaristic institutions which have brought disaster on the Japanese.

Other paragraphs dealt with MacArthur's power:

#4h: Representatives of civilian agencies of the United States Government or of other United Nations governments shall not participate in the occupation or function independently within Japan except upon your approval and subject as to purpose, time and extent, to decisions communicated to you by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

#13a: You will not assume any responsibility for the economic rehabilitation of Japan or the strengthening of the Japanese economy. You will make it clear to the Japanese people that: a) You assume no obligations to maintain, or have maintained, any particular standard of living in Japan, and b) That the standard of living will depend upon the thoroughness with which Japan rids itself of all militaristic ambitions . . . and cooperates with the occupying forces and the governments they represent.

#29a: You will assure that all practicable economic and police measures are taken to achieve the maximum utilization of essential Japanese resources in order that imports into Japan may be strictly limited. Such measures will include production and price controls, rationing, control of black markets, fiscal and financial controls and other measures directed toward full employment of resources, facilities and means available in Japan.

Finally, other paragraphs laid out specific policy directives. Paragraph #25 opened the door for land reform, the formation of labor unions, and the breakup of economic monopolies: “It is the intent of the United States Government to encourage and show favor to a) Policies which permit a wide distribution of income and ownership of the means of production and trade, and b) The development of organizations in labor, industry, and agriculture on an economic basis.”

JCS 1380/15 was almost like a business plan. It became the bible of the occupation. MacArthur chopped up its 179 paragraphs into fragments and assigned them to his fifteen staff sections for implementation. If it provided a ready checklist, it proved even more valuable in reminding SCAP's senior officers of their purpose for being in Japan: to liberate.

With the occupation's mission and objectives now in place, MacArthur's next task was organization and staffing. But first he had to deal with reporting relationships. In an effort to appease its allies, Washington had established a rather confusing organizational structure:

 

 

The entity in charge of ruling the Japanese government (JG) was the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (the organization, not the man, though the name was used interchangeably for one or the other—in itself an indication of MacArthur's extraordinary power).