Supreme Commander (24 page)

Tokyo was no different. There a reporter compared the trial to a Spanish bullfight—except that such comparison was unfair to the bull. At least the bullfight, in certain moments, was entertaining. The IMFTE was one long tedium, greeted at the end by a sigh of relief, even by the convicted.

So it was greeted by the supreme commander, relieved he had never pursued his boyhood dream of someday becoming a lawyer.

 

ON NOVEMBER
12, 1948, the tribunal delivered its verdicts. All twenty-five defendants were found guilty; seven were sentenced to execution, seventeen to life, and one to twenty years. The verdicts went to the supreme commander, who promptly rubber-stamped them. One of the defendants had bitter words for the supreme commander for not allowing those sentenced to death to be shot rather than hanged. MacArthur, he said, lacked “a scintilla of the so-called compassion of the warrior.” He was wrong. MacArthur had the grace to preserve the dignity of those sentenced to death: In direct violation of an order from Washington that had been signed off by President Truman, he refused to allow photographers at the executions. In his five years managing Japan before the Korean War broke out, MacArthur received hundreds of orders from Washington. He disobeyed only two: this and an order concerning breaking up the
zaibatsu
.

Elsewhere in Japan and the Pacific, some 2,200 trials of 5,700 people were conducted. The conviction rate was 77 percent—not as high as MacArthur hoped, but certainly enough for him to get his message across, and to dispel any cries of kangaroo courts.

For many Americans, and especially the American military, there would be no great apology for what Japan had done, no great confessions of war guilt. MacArthur understood. An avid Civil War buff (every year for his birthday his wife, Jean, gave him a biography of a Confederate general), he fully agreed with his friend Admiral Spruance:

There is nothing to indicate any feeling of war guilt on the part of either the Germans or the Japanese—only a feeling of regret at having lost. I think the most we can ever expect from them [the Japanese] is an admission that they made a bad mistake in starting the war. I never heard of a Southerner feeling that the South was in the wrong in starting the Civil War.

For what was supposed to be the most important trial in history, IMTFE's legacy proved to be disappointing. There were no unforgettable films of massacres or concentration camps, there were no great moments of stirring eloquence like the words of the U.S. chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson. There was no trial of the emperor, the man to whom the Japanese army and navy were solely responsible. No one in Hollywood would make a movie. The Tokyo trial came too late, took too long, and failed to convey moral clarity.

There was no Shiro Ishii. But in the group of those convicted was the general who had blocked the infamous Ishii from attacking the United States with biological agents: Yoshijiro Umezu. His singular good deed, one of the very few instances of courage and humanity in the Japanese war machine, went unrecognized and unrewarded. The court's verdict on him, when it came to war crimes, simply said: “There is not sufficient evidence that Umezu was responsible for the commission of war crimes.” Fair enough, but what about the fact that he had gone out of his way to
prevent
the commission of atrocities? It didn't matter: Because of his high position, he must go down with everyone else at the trial. Also with him were three peace advocates, accused for not having succeeded. One was Prince Fumimaro Konoe, who had opposed the Pearl Harbor attack and had sought a meeting in September 1941 with President Roosevelt to try to avert war (FDR refused to see him, even though both Ambassador Joseph Grew and British ambassador Robert Craigie strongly urged the men to meet). Konoe, before committing suicide the day he was arrested, delivered a blistering assault on Americans and Japanese alike: “The victors are too brutal, the losers too servile.” Another peace advocate who was convicted was the Marquis Koichi Kido, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, the man who finally persuaded the emperor to order the war brought to an end. The third was the distinguished Mamoru Shigemitsu, the man who had represented Japan at the
Missouri
surrender signing. After four years Shigemitsu would be released from prison and once again become Japan's foreign minister. While in New York for a session of the United Nations in 1951, he called on MacArthur, who said to him: “I was always convinced that you were innocent and that your condemnation was a mistake.”

Then why hadn't the supreme commander commuted the sentence when he had the power to do so?

PART THREE

WASHINGTON TAKES OVER

20

George Kennan Pays a Visit

B
Y MID-1947 AMERICA
was comfortably ensconced in Japan. A diplomat from India, returning to Japan as his country's new ambassador, went to present his credentials to MacArthur. He found that Tokyo's street names had been changed. Bright new signs indicated B Avenue or 18th Street, and parks and movie theaters were now called Doolittle Field or the Ernie Pyle Theatre. Another sign pointed the way to Washington Heights, a housing settlement. “Americans,” he told his daughter, “get homesick so easily.”

Tokyo had so many movie theaters, nightclubs, and dance halls that life in Tokyo was like a perpetual Roman holiday. The country was safe from dangerous guns and arms, probably too much so. The Japanese government had successfully disarmed the military, to the point that all the samurai swords had been turned in. Even the wooden swords used in a kabuki play were confiscated, causing puzzlement among the Japanese as to why the Americans were so obsessed about security.

The legacy of the atom bomb had largely receded. The population—245,000 at the time of the bombing—was, after eighteen months, more than 250,000. Observed one journalist:

As far as the people in the city itself were concerned, [the atom bomb] was a horrible disaster to be accepted and patiently borne, like a giant earthquake or flood. Only afterwards, when they began reading the foreign press, did they learn that a crime against humanity had been committed and that the martyrdom of Hiroshima would ring down the ages. Then foreign notables, scientists and journalists all came pouring in, eager for horrors, American ladies wept in public and uttered beautiful thoughts, and the inhabitants of this modest capital of a modest province found the eyes of the whole world upon them.

Hiroshima was a growing tourist center, with an “Atomic Souvenir Shop” selling fused glassware, twisted metal, and other relics of the blast. An “Atomic Bookshop” sold Japanese literature on the bomb, and there was even a beauty salon called the “Atomic Beauty Shoppe.” On New Year's Day 1946, a group of U.S. Marines, which included many college and pro football players (including the 1943 Heisman Trophy winner Angelo Bertelli of Notre Dame), had staged a football game in Nagasaki. They called it the “Atom Bowl.” Nobody seemed to mind. Even the emperor was nonchalant. He visited Hiroshima and addressed the people like a kindly uncle: “There seems to have been considerable damage here.”

Culture and freedom were beginning to flourish. Japan boasted no fewer than 168 periodicals in amusement and entertainment, 165 literary reviews, 132 science magazines, and 85 women's and children's magazines. By a margin of 58 percent, Japanese women said they preferred a love marriage (79 percent) to a family-arranged marriage (21 percent)—a major break with tradition.

The disarmament of the most heavily armed nation on earth had gone off without a hitch. In locating and eliminating all the arsenals and ordnance depots, American soldiers had stumbled on 100,000 tons of chemical warfare supplies that had been awaiting the invasion. Then they made an even bigger discovery, one straight out of Jules Verne: a mysterious, nonexistent island. It had been erased from all the Japanese maps, but still it existed—Okunoshima, off the mainland near Hiroshima—where the Japanese had constructed a huge poison gas factory. Gas manufactured at Okunoshima killed as many people in China (80,000) as did the atom bomb at Hiroshima. American soldiers found almost 5,000 tons of chemicals and quickly dumped them into the sea.

The Japanese armed forces had been totally disbanded. A purge of 180,000 military officers and 40,000 government officials, businessmen, and teachers had removed many militarists from positions of influence (and opened up job opportunities for younger people). Land reform had been accomplished. A new constitution had been installed and political rights codified. In record time—achieved in months what had taken America decades—the Japanese had in place the world's most liberal guarantees of civil rights: freedom of thought and conscience, academic freedom, the essential equality of the sexes, social security, and the right to work. Political parties were blossoming like dandelions after a spring rain. The voting in the country's national election had gone off without a hitch and brought fresh faces into the Diet.

SCAP had successfully cracked down on the hated
Kempeitai
, or military police. The Civil Administration and Education Section, nicknamed the “American Ministry of Japanese Education,” was busy screening militarist doctrine from the education system and eliminating secondary-school courses on how to repair gliders, use bayonets, or throw hand grenades. Textbooks were being cleaned up, no longer allowing math questions like: “If one machine gun will kill ten Americans, how many will kill one hundred?” The books could discuss the atom bomb, so long as they also discussed the Rape of Manila or the Rape of Nanking. They also had to include an explanation of the war itself: America used the bomb only to terminate a war it did not start. Absolutely forbidden were statements like: “Japan might have won the war but for the atom bomb, a weapon only barbarians would use.”

Movement in and out of the country was tightly controlled. No one, except with the personal permission and approval of General MacArthur, was allowed into the country, considered in military terms to be a highly restricted theater of operations. Visitors to Japan needed to carry their military permit number with them at all times; military police were everywhere and would ask for it. SCAP's chief of counterintelligence threatened censorship of any news or information that “disturbs the public tranquility.” Forbidden topics included Emperor Hirohito as a ruler, SCAP's role in drafting the Japanese constitution, and the glory of the great emperor Meiji. No criticism or cartoon caricatures of MacArthur ever appeared in the newspapers. SCAP directives stated that “news must adhere strictly to the truth . . . there should be no destructive criticisms of the Allied Forces of Occupation.”

One of the people invited to Japan was Roger Baldwin, the principal founder and executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Baldwin came to Japan expecting to find all kinds of problems with SCAP's censorship restrictions. Instead, to his surprise, he fell under the MacArthur spell: “Why, that man knows more about civil liberties than I do!” Baldwin stayed in Japan for ten weeks and, with MacArthur's full support, created the Japan Civil Liberties Union.

The American military engineers conducted almost all the new construction and repairs to dams, dikes, roads, and bridges. SCAP's financial books were in perfect order. There were no procurement scandals, no corruption in the awarding of contracts, no embezzlement. MacArthur had reason to be pleased with himself. The peasant landholders, the factory workers, and the women—three large constituencies comprising 80 percent of the adult population—all appreciated what he had done. He had spared no one in his effort to democratize and demilitarize Japan. He had done more than just occupy the country, he had instituted widespread and massive reform.

 

IT IS WHEN
everything is going well that the darkest clouds often appear on the horizon. From a distance they can sometimes be noticed, if only barely. Back in February 1946, presidential advisor John J. McCloy (later high commissioner of Germany and president of the World Bank) had visited Tokyo, gotten the full MacArthur charm treatment, and come away dazzled. “My God, how does he do it?” he sputtered to Faubion Bowers. “He's in better health than when I saw him before the war . . . more fascinating than when he was Chief of Staff [1930–35]. . . . What a man! What a man!”
*

In his report, however, McCloy expressed concern that liberal reforms would drive Japan “further left” and the war criminals trial would be a total “fiasco.” Given that wartime Japan had probably been the most right-wing nation on the face of the earth, it is hard to imagine how MacArthur could be accused of driving Japan too far to the left. (It reminds one of the quip that the Founding Fathers could never get the U.S. Constitution ratified today because it is too radical.)

For a man as brilliant as John McCloy to make such an off-target remark suggested that the problems were deeper than the liberal reforms or controversial war trials. His comment said more about Washington than about Japan. Trouble was brewing back home, and McCloy, the ultimate Washington insider, was a man in the know. What was occurring was a change of heart, a reordering of how to fit Japan into America's global priorities. MacArthur's expanding the purge of militarists, dissolving major industries, returning land to the peasants, and calling for an end of the occupation was not what Cold War warriors in Washington wanted to hear. Originally, when the occupation started, New Deal planners were in control in Washington. Now with Truman firmly ensconced as president, a new cast of characters was emerging who had little sympathy for MacArthur's moral crusade.

On March 17, 1946, the supreme commander gave his first press conference since the early days in Australia in 1942. “The time has now approached that we must talk peace with Japan,” he announced. A prolonged occupation would only cause economic strangulation. This was also an opportunity for the newly created peace organization to show what it could do: “If the United Nations can't function now, it never will,” he warned.

While almost everyone focused on the political implications of his speech, few paid attention to the thrust of what he was really saying: The occupation with all its restrictions was strangling Japan's economy. “Japan is not producing enough to satisfy her needs,” he said. “The difference must be filled by the Allies. If we keep this economic blockade up, more and more we will have to support this country. It is an expensive luxury. But we will pay for it or let people die by the millions.” The population of Japan, seventy-two million in 1945, was now eighty million after the return of soldiers and the postwar baby boom. The country, cut off from trade with adjoining countries, simply could not produce enough food to feed itself. Nor could its economy grow. “We do not allow Japan to trade,” he complained. “She has got to be allowed to trade with the world. Japan is only permitted a barter system through the bottleneck of SCAP. We've got to take it out of the hands of the Government and put it in the hands of private traders.” If Japan was to survive, it must be permitted to rebuild its manufacturing capacity, conduct international trade, and import food. Without major changes, Japan's economy would remain in the doldrums, leaving the United States no choice other than to provide massive amounts of foreign aid. “No weapon, not even the atom bomb, is as deadly in its final effect as economic warfare,” he said. “The atom bomb kills by the thousands, starvation by the millions.”

MacArthur's speech did little to calm Washington. To the contrary, it demonstrated once again his unique ability to stir up a hornets' nest back home. SCAP's program, said George Kennan, was causing “economic disaster, inflation . . . near anarchy which would be precisely what the Communists want.” Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall announced that it “really amounted to socialism, pure and simple, if not communism.” The Army undersecretary, William Draper, a Wall Street bond trader, joined the fray: SCAP had turned Japan into an economic “morgue.” James Lee Kauffman, a Wall Street lawyer and close friend of Royall and Draper, wrote a blistering article in
Newsweek
calling SCAP's economic program “far to the left of anything tolerated in America.”

Be that as it may, these critics ignored the fact that MacArthur's original directive from Washington contained the specific instruction
not
to “assume any responsibility for the economic rehabilitation or the strengthening of the Japanese economy”—good advice at the time. Now, apparently, times had changed. MacArthur claimed that reviving Japan's economy required loosening its ties with the United States. Washington policy makers argued the opposite, that economic revival required closer ties to resurrect the great Japanese enterprises of old, the family holding companies. What made the gulf between MacArthur and the policy makers so vast was that they were ten thousand miles apart. MacArthur thought primarily of what was best for Japan; the Washington policy makers thought of what was best for the United States. MacArthur thought of Asia; Marshall, now secretary of state, thought of the whole globe.

The supreme commander was becoming a major thorn in Washington's side, too independent for his own good. Marshall, Undersecretary of State Acheson, Defense Secretary Forrestal, Kennan—the head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff—and President Truman (all “Europe first” proponents) concluded that the Soviet Union was a threat of the highest order. MacArthur, who had more firsthand experience dealing with the Russians than any of them, took a more sanguine view, feeling it was a threat that could be managed.

How could a conservative Republican be such a socialist? How could a military man be so unmilitaristic? MacArthur defied being pigeonholed. He was—and this is what most scared his superiors—unpredictable.

At a time when there was growing concern about the Communist trend in China and the need to make Japan a pinnacle in U.S. security, MacArthur was preaching independence for Japan. In early February 1947, he told a delegation of congressmen (headed by Secretary of the Interior Julius A. Krug) that a formal peace treaty would promote the democratization of Japan, and that the longer the occupation continued, the more dependent Japan's economy would become on the United States—which was not good. He wrote a letter to Congress saying that “military occupations serve their purpose at best for only a limited time, after which deterioration rapidly sets in.” He followed up by sending his aide George Atcheson to Washington to make the case for independence; Atcheson's words fell on deaf ears. MacArthur was saying things Washington did not want to hear. It was now time for Washington to start exerting more control.