Supreme Commander (9 page)

In other words, take it or leave it. The delegates nodded in agreement that their views would be consulted, but the Russians knew toughness when they saw it. Their response was one of grudging admiration: “Now there's a man!” The council met for more than 160 sessions; MacArthur never attended any of them, leaving the United States to be represented by one of his officials. With the State Department he was more blunt: He told the department he would do things his way, otherwise he might as well “quit and go home.”

Even Japan felt the ax of his decisiveness. As supreme commander he exercised his full power to withhold his support of the Japanese government when he felt it appropriate, like the time he told the Japanese foreign minister: “Baron Shidehara may thereafter be acceptable to the Emperor as the next Prime Minister, but he will not be acceptable to me.”

Asked if he understood what MacArthur meant, the minister replied: “Too clear!”

MacArthur would be a strongman, but he would not be a dictator seeking to stay in power forever. He had too great an appreciation of history not to recognize that military occupations are never popular and never last long. Bismarck had once said, “Fools say they learn by experience. I prefer to learn by other people's experience.” MacArthur preferred the ultimate source of Bismarck's quote, the saying by the ancient Greek historian Polybius (200–118 B.C.): “There are two roads—one through the misfortune of their own, the other through those of others; the former is the most unmistakable, the latter the less painful.”

He knew Japan was a country like Germany in World War I, a country that had never been defeated on its own soil. He was ruling a nation in a state of shock that would soon wear off. Japan had no choice but to accept whatever reforms he imposed, no matter how drastic they might seem. It was a great experiment he was undertaking, he wrote, “the world's greatest laboratory for an experiment in the liberation of a people from totalitarian military rule and for the liberation of government from within. . . . Yet history clearly showed that no modern military occupation of a conquered nation had been a success.”

“Military occupation was not new to me,” he continued:

I had garrisoned the West Bank of the Rhine as commander of the Rainbow Division at the end of World War One. At first hand I had seen what I thought were basic and fundamental weaknesses in prior forms of military occupations: the substitution of civil by military authority; the loss of self-respect and self-confidence by the people; the constantly growing ascendancy of centralized dictatorial power instead of a localized and representative system; the lowering of spiritual and moral tone of a population controlled by foreign bayonets; the inevitable deterioration of the occupying forces themselves as the disease of power infiltrated their ranks and bred a sort of race superiority.

If any occupation lasts too long, or is not carefully watched from the start, one party becomes slaves and the other masters. History teaches, too, that almost every military occupation breeds new wars of the future. I had studied the lives of Alexander and Caesar and Napoleon, and great as these captains were, all had suffered when they became the leaders of the occupation forces. I tried to remember the lessons my own father had taught me, lessons learned out of his experience as military governor of the Philippines, but I was assailed by the greatest misgivings. With such hazards as I anticipated, could I succeed? My doubts were to be my best safeguard, my fears my greatest strength.

7

The Photograph That Saved a Thousand Ships

O
N SEPTEMBER 27,
a meeting took place that would shape the destiny of both victor and vanquished. Unlike the public glare of the deck of the
Missouri
, this meeting was held inside an embassy. Unlike the treaty signing, known well in advance, nobody in the outside world knew this meeting had taken place until it was over. No transcript was ever made. There were no witnesses, just a single Japanese translator who kept his mouth shut and wrote no memoir. Unheard of for such a pivotal meeting, there was no specific agenda or clear concept of goals and objectives. It was more a touchy-feely exercise of two men groping in the dark, checking each other out. The real communication lay not in what one man said, but in how the other man responded.

The two men, of course, were the supreme commander and the emperor.

At the meeting a photograph was taken. It caused a sensation, for never before had the Son of Heaven permitted himself to be photographed with a mere commoner, much less with an enemy. Like Helen of Troy, “the face that launched a thousand ships,” this photograph—more than anything else—kept the peace and saved the United States from having to launch a massive invasion to keep Japan subdued.

Coming so soon after his Atsugi landing and the Missouri surrender ceremony, it demonstrated MacArthur at his best in terms of his flair for the dramatic.

“Welcome, Sir.” The emperor, dumbfounded, a man not used to shaking hands, stepped out of his limousine and found himself greeted by General Bonner Fellers, MacArthur's chief of counterintelligence. Little did he know what this man had written about him: “As Emperor and acknowledged head of the State, Hirohito cannot sidestep war guilt. He is part of and must be considered an instigator of the Pacific war . . . whether or not Pearl Harbor was against the Emperor's will is of little consequence . . . inescapably he is responsible.” In other words, Hirohito might as well get ready for the hangman's noose.

Fortunately for the emperor, this man so anxious to meet him in person and look into his eyes was also the one who, more than any other American advisor to MacArthur, would save his life. For it was this general with the unusual name who had been advocating from day one, both in Washington when he worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, now the CIA) and when he served as chief of psychological warfare in the Pacific before joining MacArthur in the Philippines, that the emperor should not be hanged as a war criminal. To the Japanese, said Fellers, hanging the emperor “would be comparable to the crucifixion of Christ to us. All would fight to die like ants.”

If the emperor didn't know how precariously his life hung in the balance, he certainly had been reminded of it ten minutes earlier, when his car stopped at a traffic light. A traffic light! Emperors' cars do not stop at traffic lights; traffic lights stop for them. Not this time. The American GI acting as traffic cop—security was especially tight that morning—flashed a smile at the waiting imperial Daimler while making sure the next street was clear before waving the three cars on. Understandably the emperor's stomach was churning at this brazen demonstration of his smallness. He had no idea what to expect other than that when he arrived at the American Embassy he would be greeted, as befitted an emperor, by General MacArthur himself.

But MacArthur was not there.

“I am honored to meet you,” said Fellers. The two men shook hands.
*
 

Fellers ushered the emperor and his entourage into the building, where Maj. Faubion Bowers, fluent in Japanese, shocked the group by instructing the entourage of Japanese officials to wait downstairs while he escorted Hirohito and his personal interpreter upstairs to meet MacArthur alone. The emperor, observed Bowers, looked “frightened to death. As I took his top hat, I noticed his hands were trembling. On meeting MacArthur on the threshold, he bowed low, very low, a servant's bow.”

In fact he bowed so low that the startled supreme commander found himself holding the emperor's hand over Hirohito's head. MacArthur escorted the emperor into the drawing room, where a photographer snapped three pictures one after the other, and quickly departed. The only other person in the room was Hirohito's translator. As at Atsugi, MacArthur put all his trust in the Japanese: He had no translator of his own to ensure his words weren't being misstated. To make his guest feel at ease, MacArthur began by relating how he had at one time been received by the emperor's father at the end of the Russo-Japanese War. The emperor, hands still trembling, declined to touch his cup of coffee lest he spill it. MacArthur, seeing his distress, pulled out his gold cigarette case and offered an American cigarette; Hirohito, no regular smoker, eagerly accepted, and MacArthur leaned forward and flicked his cigarette lighter.

The two men were not entirely strangers; under less traumatic circumstances there were a number of things they could have talked about. They had met once before, back in 1937 when Manuel Quezon of the Philippines met with the emperor and MacArthur sat next to Quezon as his military advisor. Had either Hirohito or MacArthur been invited into the other's private office, he might have been thrilled to discover a mutual idol, Abraham Lincoln: MacArthur had pictures of Lincoln and Washington on the wall; Hirohito had busts of Lincoln, Napoleon, and Darwin. Both men had exalted military titles, MacArthur as Commander of the American Army of the Southwest Pacific and now Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Hirohito as emperor and commander of the Japanese armed forces. Both men were well traveled: The general had visited Japan and the Far East in 1905–6 and lived in Asia since 1937; in 1921 the emperor had taken a six-month royal tour of Hong Kong, Singapore, Egypt, Malta, England, France, Belgium, Holland, and Italy. Finally, and not least, each man was absolutely convinced that he alone was a man of destiny and represented God's favored race.

Normally in a meeting of the conqueror and the vanquished, the vanquished must be the more nervous: Is he going to have his head cut off? Thrown into a dungeon for the rest of his life?

Actually, in this case it was MacArthur who was the more tense. Japan was prostrate, what more could the emperor lose? But for MacArthur, having won a war, he could easily lose the peace—a grim prospect after such a hard-fought war. He had to tread carefully, for he had politicians and generals back in Washington snapping at his heels. A lot of people back home wanted vengeance. He had to be careful. While he enjoyed unprecedented power as a supreme commander, he knew his standing with President Truman and Army Chief George Marshall was hardly rock solid and could be taken away at a moment's notice.
*
 

Ever since the surrender on the
Missouri
he had known he would have to move with utmost delicacy. His first test would be what he was going to do with the emperor.

MacArthur also knew that he was in a fairly weak position, like any head of a military occupation. Without the emperor's support, he would need a million soldiers to maintain order. He did not have a million soldiers, at the moment he had barely five hundred thousand—and almost all of them were clamoring to go back home.

MacArthur was a general: The same style of thinking he had used in war he would use in this new form of war called peace: “To avoid the frontal attack with its terrible loss of life; to bypass Japanese strong points and neutralize them by cutting their lines of supply; to thus isolate their armies and starve them in the battlefield; to, as baseball player Willie Keeler used to say: ‘hit 'em where they ain't.' ” In other words, be clever and outfox them. Be patient. Don't rush into battle, sit back and wait and take advantage of the other side's impatience.

Urged by his staff weeks earlier to summon the emperor to his headquarters, MacArthur had refused: “To do so would be to outrage the feelings of the Japanese people and make a martyr of the Emperor in their eyes. No, I shall wait and in time the Emperor will voluntarily come to see me.” MacArthur explained: “In this case the patience of the East rather than the haste of the West will best serve our purpose.” Asked if the emperor initiated a visit, would he return it, MacArthur again said no: “I shall never call upon the Emperor until a treaty of peace is signed and the occupation comes to a close. To do otherwise would be universally construed as an acknowledgement of the equality between his position and that which I occupy in representation of the Allied Powers—an equality which does not exist.”

His position was clear: The emperor must make the first move. The days went by, he waited. He was in no hurry, time was on his side, he had plenty of other things to do. He did, however, make quiet overtures through two Japanese Quaker friends of Bonner Fellers who were anxious to prove that the emperor was “a lover of peace.” Sure enough, after two weeks an inquiry was received by the American Embassy and the highly anticipated meeting quickly arranged. The Japanese were given no clue what to expect other than that the meeting would take place at the American Embassy—not at MacArthur's official office in the Dai Ichi Building. The emperor's visit was to be a courtesy call, nothing more.

Now sitting in the reception hall of the American Embassy, smoking his cigarette and looking at the man across from him, the emperor was dumbfounded at the supreme commander's attire. Here he was, the Son of Heaven, dressed in the full diplomatic outfit of cutaway jacket and striped trousers, calling on a man wearing military khaki trousers and shirt, no jacket or tie. The American's only mark of military power was a small circle of five stars on his right collar. Yet he was the most powerful general in the world.

The emperor had no idea how much MacArthur knew of his involvement in the war, how much he had rewarded his military commanders after the bloody conquest of China, how he had known of the plan to bomb Pearl Harbor and done nothing to stop it, how he could have prevented the beheading of captured American pilots. The emperor knew the Americans were seething with anger over the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, plus the Japanese atrocities of war. He also knew that his former prime minister, Hideki Tojo, had been arrested two days ago and was now cooling his heels in Sugamo Prison, possibly to be executed any moment. Was that the fate awaiting him?

He had a vague hope that he would be allowed to stay on as emperor, for the Potsdam Declaration had specified that the occupation would be conducted according to the “freely expressed will of the Japanese people.” Was not the emperor beloved by his people? Was he not the expression of their will?

He knew that the Hague Convention of 1928 precluded tampering with the political machinery of an occupied country, and that there was also the Atlantic Charter of 1941, which proclaimed America's commitment to the right of all peoples to determine their own form of government. But he also knew that Japan had submitted to unconditional surrender, meaning the victors could do whatever they chose, and that his own army chief of staff had told him unconditional surrender meant the end of the imperial system. He knew further, totally apart from what the Americans' disposition might be, that the Australians, the British, the Chinese, and especially the Russians were out to get his scalp.

MacArthur, for his part, planned to be quiet and hear what the emperor had to say. As Theodore Roosevelt had once said to him when MacArthur was serving as the president's personal military aide in 1903: “You must listen to the grass grow.”

What MacArthur didn't want to hear was a plea for mercy. He had already made up his mind to follow the Potsdam Declaration—how could he not?—but he had no intention of revealing his hand. Military men have a code of honor. To forgive someone you must first of all respect him. If the emperor was to be let off the hook, he must earn his way.

The meeting began. “I come to you, General MacArthur, to offer myself to the judgment of the powers you represent . . . as the one to bear sole responsibility for every political and military decision made and action taken by my people in the conduct of war.” The key operative word in this sentence was “every.” There was no equivocating here, no mea culpa, no skirting the edges about Pearl Harbor, or the Rape of Nanking, or the atrocities of the Bataan March. Everything was on the table.

MacArthur, knowing how deep and dreadful the emperor's humiliation must be, was stunned. “A tremendous impression swept me,” he wrote later. “This courageous assumption of a responsibility implicit with death, a responsibility clearly belied by facts of which I was fully aware, moved me to the very marrow of my bones. He was an emperor by inherent birth, but in that instant, I knew I faced the First Gentleman of Japan in his own right.” After the meeting he told Faubion Bowers: “To see someone who is so high, reduced to such a position of humility is very painful.”

Of course the emperor's admission also suggested he might be talking in riddles to absolve all the generals who engaged in atrocities, but that was a question for another day when SCAP conducted a war crimes trial. For MacArthur what was important now was that the emperor had not begged for mercy or put him on the spot. The emperor—like MacArthur—was a man of honor.

The two men engaged in casual conversation. There was no discussion of politics or war crimes—that was taboo. MacArthur, though he had no idea how true it was, made a specific point of praising Hirohito for his role in ending the war. Then Hirohito dropped a surprise. He told MacArthur that the bombing of Hiroshima was what had impelled Japan to finally surrender: “The peace party did not prevail until the bombing of Hiroshima created a situation which could be dramatized.” If MacArthur, who had gone on record opposing the bomb, was amazed by this revelation, he did not admit it, nor did he necessarily believe it. By blaming everything on the bomb, the emperor was protecting himself and the Japanese people. MacArthur would play along. He was there, after all, not as an investigator to unravel deep truths but rather to search common ground on which to base future cooperation and harmony.