Supreme Commander (33 page)

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PREFACE

xiii  
“He is shrewd”
: Lewin, 178.

xiv  
majestic title
: Dwight Eisenhower also went by the title of Supreme Commander, but it was solely in a military capacity, first as Supreme Allied Commander, Expeditionary Forces (for the Normandy invasion), and later as Supreme Commander when he was head of NATO for a brief period in 1951. MacArthur had the more exalted full title (“of the Allied Powers”). He also had substantially more responsibility, both civil and military.

xiv  
“had such enormous”
: Sebald, 103. William Sebald, who carried the rank of ambassador, was the State Department representative in Japan during the occupation.

xiv  
“The greatest gamble”
: Wildes, 12; Kelley and Ryan, 144.

xiv  
“without a single shot”
: Yoshida, 50.

xv  
“one of the worst-reported”
: Gunther, xiii.

xv  
“MacArthur is our greatest”
: Schmidt, 192; Harvey, 207

xv  
Jimmy Doolittle raids
: It should be noted today where there is controversy over the U.S. use of drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the Doolittle raids on Japan were extremely successful in avoiding off-limits targets such as schools, hospitals, and the Emperor's Palace—in sharp contrast to Japanese bombers that deliberately attacked Red Cross and Allied hospital ships.

xv  
Japanese peace overtures and no need for atom bomb or invasion
: Walter Trohan, “Rare Peace Bid U.S. Rebuffed 7 Months Ago,”
Chicago Tribune
, August 19, 1945; Evans and Romerstein, 202; Kubek, 116–20.

xvi  
ten million Japanese might have starved
: Dower, 93; Frank,
Downfall
, 35; Irokawa, 37.

1
: A PRESIDENT ROLLS THE DICE

6  
Truman wishing the Medal of Honor over the U.S. presidency
: Perret, 638. Just one month later, in presenting the Medal of Honor to Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, the president actually said this to several generals.

7  
“discussed . . . Supreme Commander”
: Truman Diaries, June 17, 1945, in
Off the Record
. Truman misquoted the expression by including the Lodge family. The original quote from John C. Bossidy's 1910 poem read: “And this is good old Boston, The home of the bean and the cod, Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots, And the Cabots talk only to God.”

7  
“a play actor . . . how a country”
: Ibid.

7  
“MacArthur says”
: Manchester, 145.

7  
“a senior officer should not be”
: MacArthur, 85.

8  
Japanese attack on Clark, Iba, and Nichols airfields
: Bergamini, 856.

8  
“making a mistake”
: Truman Diaries, August 10, 1945, in
Off the Record
, 60.

2
: FLYING NINE HUNDRED MILES FROM OKINAWA TO ATSUGI

10  
“My God, general”
: Manchester, 444; Breuer, 236.

10  
“You will exercise”
: U.S. Department of State,
Occupation of Japan
, Appendix 16, 89, in Perry, 63.

10  
“Manila is ours”
: Lee and Henschel, 178.

11  
C-
54
marked
Bataan: There were actually two
Bataan
s. The famous one, used by MacArthur in the Philippines, was a B-17E Flying Fortress, at the time back in California undergoing a total overhaul. In need of a more modern aircraft, MacArthur accepted delivery of a new C-54, called
Bataan II
. This was the plane he used in Japan for two years until it was replaced by a Super G Constellation marked
SCAP
.

11  
“Harbor mined”
: Brines, 39–40.

11  
“a ghostly fox”
: Archer, 140.

12  
“Our experts”
: Mashbir, 22.

13  
“The winner of the next war”
: Hunt, 77.

13  
“Take Buna”
: Eichelberger, 21. This was vintage MacArthur language: “or not come back alive”—much more memorable than “don't come back alive.”

13  
“the two best damn officers”
: Ibid., xviii.

13  
three Army positions appointed solely by FDR
: Ibid., xi.

14  
“pictures of cadets”
: Ibid., xviii.

14  
“We have stopped”
: Drape, 240.

14  
“deserved a team”
: Ibid., xix.

14  
“Had there been”
: Schoor, 27–28.

15  
“To take up”
: Ganoe, 48.

16  
“If at any time”
: Mashbir, 309.

17  
Imperial Order of Meiji (medals of Eichelberger)
: Cover story, “General Robert Eichelberger,”
Time
, September 10, 1945, 32.

18  
“The Japanese High Command”
: Eichelberger, xii.

18  
“I am Commander Anatoliy Rodionov”
: Craig, 288.

18  
the Russians and General Yamashita
: Breuer, 185–86.

19  “
principal architect
”: Sidney Shalett, “Occupation of Japan Planned Like a Battle,”
New York Times
, September 2, 1945, 1.

19  
“fool-proof
”: Ibid.

19  
“First destroy”
: Whitney, 213. In his memoirs, 282–83, MacArthur adds four more: “punish war criminals . . . modernize the constitution . . . hold free elections . . . separate church from state.” Whitney's version is the correct one: There is no evidence that MacArthur thought about the Japanese constitution at the time.

20  
“From the moment”
: MacArthur, 282–83.

20  
Initial Post-Surrender Policy
: The Truman administration soon afterward released this document to the public. See “Text of White House Statement on Occupation Policy in Japan,”
New York Times
, September 23, 1945, 3.

21  
“Resist with tooth and nail!”
: Okamoto, 14.

22  
“I met all”
: MacArthur, 30.

23  “
My soldiers will never”
: Choate, 66.

23  
“The Emperor requests”
: Ibid., 67.

23  
“We declared war”
: Toland,
The Rising Sun
, 838.

25  
“I could see . . . gambled blindly with death”
: Whitney, 214.

3
: “THE MOST COURAGEOUS ACT OF THE ENTIRE WAR”

26  
“simply born”
: Choate, 67.

26  
“Homma may have”
: Miller,
Fighter for Freedom
, 12.

26  “
I'm glad to meet”
: Ibid., 278.

27  “
I have had”
: Grew, 534.

27  
“The naïveté of the Japanese”
: Ibid., 479.

28  
Churchill . . . “the most daring”
: Willoughby, 295; Whitney, 215.

29  
“Bob, this is payoff time”
: Craig, 292; Whitney, 215; the actual phrase, though slightly less colorful, is recalled by Eichelberger as “Bob, this is the payoff,” Eichelberger,
Jungle Road
, 262.

29  
“It was a masterpiece”
: Kawai, 12.

29  
“Son, I think you're in the wrong army”
: Craig, 292–93.

31  
“The gauntlet must be run”
: Eichelberger, 262.

31  
“No one can live forever”
: Toland, 865.

31  
“their inability”
: Harries, 43.

31  
egg incident
: Sheldon, 29.

31  2
,
185
SCAPINS
: General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers,
Catalog of Directives to the Japanese Government
. Considering that MacArthur was supreme commander for almost two thousand days, this volume works out to be a frequency of slightly more than one a day, every day of the week. These instructions covered countless government activities, ranging from the general to the specific. Examples include distribution of food, abolition of the Japanese general headquarters, proceedings of the Diet, apprehension of suspected war criminals, fishery inspection, supply of smallpox vaccine to repatriation ships, fire protection, hoisting of the national flag, shipment of Chinese cabbage seed to Korea, and application for permission to manufacture small-size passenger cars.

4
: SWORD SHEATHED, BUT GLEAMING IN ITS SCABBARD

32  
Ieyasu Tokugawa “The right use”
: Wolfe, 89.

33  
Churchill, Montgomery, and Brooke
: James, 657;
Marshall
: Kelley and Ryan, 18.

35  
Toshikazu Kase
: The last name is pronounced
KAH-zay
(in Japanese, all syllables end with a vowel sound).

36  “
There were few men . . . Our journey”
: Kase, 5.

36  
“Were we not sorrowing men”
: Ibid., 4.

37  
“a majestic array . . . mighty pageant”
: Ibid., 5.

38  
“I suggest
”: Mashbir, 322. Mashbir in his book cites the translation as “nonchalant face,” which surely was not his intention for such a momentous occasion. Obviously he was the victim of poor translators.

38  
“in this particularly”
: Ibid.

38  
“diplomats without flag”
: Kase, 6.

39  
“like penitent boys”
: Ibid., 7; Steinberg, 145.

39  
“The whole scene”
: Sakamoto, 58.

40  
Vandenberg and greatest speech since Gettysburg Address
: MacArthur, 289.

41  
“Here is the victor . . . an altar of peace”
: Kase, 5.

41  
“Sutherland, show him”
: Kenney, 188.

42  
the six pens
: Accounts vary as to the number of pens and who got them; some accounts say five, some say six, some say Truman got a pen, some say the battleship
Missouri
got a pen, and so on, all of which goes to show that even with hundreds of witnesses, eyewitness testimony varies and history—no matter how well recorded—is often less than 100 percent accurate, making the story of MacArthur's pens resemble a game of three-card monte.

43  “
Start 'em up, Bill,”
Lee and Henschel, 194.

46  
“Is it not rare”
: Kase, 12; Duffy, 16.

46  
“If ever a day”
: Halsey, 283.

46  
“We were not beaten”
: Kase, 14.

5
: “DOWN BUT NOT OUT”

47  
“If we allow”
: Toland, 870.

47  
Hiroshima and Nagasaki deaths
: The original statistics come from the highly regarded U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946. Over the years the Japanese Ministry of Health has increased these figures substantially by including early deaths of the survivors. Because these estimates involve a high degree of subjectivity, no firm number can be agreed upon. According to historian and Pulitzer Prize winner John Dower, the best number to use is a general total for both cities: “over 200,000” (Dower,
Ways of Forgetting
, 145–56).

48  
mid-
1944
war lost:
Irokawa, 29–31. Had Japan surrendered in mid-1944 following the fall of Saipan and defeat in Burma, 1.5 million Japanese lives would have been saved.

48  
“You are not the enemy”
: Schaffer, 142.

49  
“It's very simple . . . Women don't want war”
: Toland, 863.

50  
“Give me bread”
: MacArthur, 307.

50  
“The Japanese are”
: Sheldon, 40.

50  
“onion-skin economy”
: Harries, 25.

50  
Nagasaki . . . Osaka housing devastation statistics
: Kelley and Ryan, 150.

50  
“This city now”
: Gayn, 47.

51  
Even in Hiroshima
: MacIsaac, 17.

51  
“Dempsey damage”
: Perry, 117.

52  
“joyfully surprised”
: Shigemitsu, 376.

52  
“Should the government”
: James, 37.

53  
“General Eichelberger, have our”
: Eichelberger, 265;
PRJ
, 423.

53  
“Well, Bill . . .”
: Schoor, 32.

53  
“We are home now . . . moved me”
: Hunt, 407.

53  
“I'll never forget”
: Murray Sanders, in Williams and Wallace, 132.

54  
“Never underestimate”
: Beech, 56.

54  
“Oh, we washed her”
: Chase, 133.

54  
Halsey signing the check as “Hirohito”
: Thomas, 343.

55  
“But I was thinking of”
: Halsey, 287, 290.

55  
“Grew sat in this”
: Mashbir, 67.

55  
“We do not exclude”
: Grew, vol. 2, 1426. President Truman had two problems with Grew's advice about keeping the Japanese monarchy. During the war numerous blunt comments had been made about the emperor; suddenly to turn around and grant him immunity was seen as too much of a reversal. Even more important, the Battle of Okinawa had been raging for two months now, with no end in sight. (Truman got the memo on May 28; the Battle of Okinawa, which started on April 1, would not end until June 22.) The president, unsure if the Japanese were truly serious, feared that making a major concession at this time would be construed as an act of weakness. See Stimson and Bundy, 619–27.