The friendship of the Japanese people is of tremendous importance to the United States in the fight against Communism. Recent developments indicate clearly that the generally pro-American feelings which prevailed in Japan during the post-war years have deteriorated to an alarming degree.
During my four and a half years of military service in Japan, I found that the Japanese people had a warm regard for America. The American they admired above all others was General Douglas MacArthur, in whom they had complete trust.
In view of the increase of anti-American feeling in Japan and mindful of the esteem in which General MacArthur is held by all segments of the Japanese people, I respectfully suggest that you consider sending him to Japan on a friendship mission. Such an assignment could be made under terms and provisions deemed appropriate by you.
I am convinced that General MacArthur, by talking to the rival political groups and by meeting again with the Japanese people, could do much to restore the friendly feelings of the people of Japan toward our country.
We cannot afford the loss of Japan. I am sure that General MacArthur could help prevent such a tragedy for the free world.17
Another thing Kowalski worked on before and after his retirement was his inventions. It may have been his engineering background, or his open-mindedness, that allowed him to come up with practical and prescient solutions to problems. Frank conducted experiments at his home on Regent Drive in Alexandria, Virginia, on the way to Mount Vernon, the residence of George Washington. Because of the availability of military housing, Frank and Helene did not purchase a house until he became a member of Congress. “[Because they were] children of the depression, they bought a $40[,000 house] in 1958 with cash. In fact, my parents paid cash for everything: automobiles, furniture, appliances, etc. It rubbed off on us kids,” son Barry recalled.
Frank’s hardy, Polish immigrant mother-in-law, Sophie Bober, died in May 1974. At the funeral, his daughter urged him to see his doctor because “he looked wan and his cheeks sunken.” He had been having heart trouble in the previous years, a leaky valve combined with arteriosclerosis, but he had stubbornly refused heart surgery. In August, he finally went in to Dewitt Army Community Hospital at Fort Belvoir for tests and treatment. The evening before his surgery, on October 10, a Thursday, he gathered his children and then four grandchildren, “held court and told us all he loved us, ending with the conclusion that, since the odds were then, seven out of ten in his favor, we’d likely be laughing about the tears the next day.” “Pacu,” the nickname granddaughter Kelly gave Kowalski, went in for open heart surgery, a new procedure at the time, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on October 11, 1974. During surgery, he had an infarction and died while on the operating table.
He was survived by his wife, who grieved “enormously” and “depended on [her son] for emotional and other support.” Helene, who continued to live in the house they bought in 1958, eventually passed away at the age of seventy-nine of two heart attacks on August 13, 1989. She had been hospitalized for symptoms of heart failure. “She was tired and perhaps ready to die,” her son remembers. Barry’s oldest daughter, Kelly, with whom Helene was very close, returned from Africa, where she had been teaching and doing documentary filming. The two had a great talk, and “as if [her grandmom] had been had been waiting for Kelly to return, she died of heart failure that night. Again, a chance for the desired goodbyes.”
Barry, who after serving in the Marine Corps in Vietnam went on to a distinguished career in the U.S. Department of Justice, was a seasoned and experienced trial lawyer with the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division when his mother died. Fortunately, she had been able to make it to the Great Hall of the Department of Justice to see her son awarded the John Marshall Award for Excellence in Trial Advocacy in 1985 for the conviction of the white supremacists who had assassinated controversial radio host Alan Berg.
Carol, who had earned her master’s degree in counseling psychology, taught high school English literature and served as a high school guidance counselor in Fairfax, Virginia, and later, after retirement, was a volunteer counseling abused women in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Kowalski would have certainly been proud of the family he helped raise, and probably of the military he helped create in Japan. It was neither attacked by an outside force nor used to attack another country.
After consulting with his sister, Barry donated his father’s papers to the Library of Congress in 1990, and they were processed in 1992 and are open to researchers. It is in these papers that a very important story of an American’s—and indeed America’s—involvement with postwar Japan is found.
In ending this brief biography of Kowalski, I would like to dedicate this book to another fine, sincere, honest, and hardworking officer, Colonel Stephen J. Gabri, United States Marine Corps, who has been a mentor and friend, and whom I believe Kowalski would think very highly of had they been able to meet and work together. By chance, Steve’s own family also came from the central part of Europe and had a successful life in the United States. In Okinawa, Japan, first on the staff of III Marine Expeditionary Force as the G-4 and now as the chief of staff of the Marine Logistics Group, he has worked hard to develop the Marine Corps’ relationship with the Ground Self-Defense Force and with the militaries of other allies and friends in the region, all to maintain readiness to bring about a more peaceful and stable world.
CHAPTER ONE
GRACE OF HEAVEN
It is reported that when Shigeru Yoshida, the doughty prime minister of Japan, was informed on June 25, 1950, that the communists had struck across the 38th parallel into South Korea, he bowed to his ancestors and whispered, “It’s the grace of heaven.” History has since clearly recorded that on that day the sun goddess, Amaterasu, smiled upon her people as Japan once again began to resume her destined role as a great Asian nation.
Better than anyone else, Yoshida knew how thoroughly and completely Japan had lost the war. Shorn of her empire, deprived of her vast merchant fleet, denied access to the customary sources of raw materials and food, her island economy in shambles, Japan at the end of the war lay prostrate, her heroic people exhausted and her government in abject submission. As one of the resurrected leaders in those critical days, Yoshida bowed to the power of the conquerors as bamboo bows before a storm. Struggling valiantly against overwhelming odds, Yoshida sparked the titanic task of digging a nation out of the rubble of war, of reconstructing a government, of maintaining law and order, and of breathing into the soul of his people an uncompromising belief in the dignity of Japan. Only those who lived through those terrible days can know the total horror of a nation in defeat.
The devastation of Japan is a tragic testimony to the vulnerability of a modern nation to the horrendous destructive capability of massive air power. Hordes of American bombers had laid waste to the major cities of the country. Tōkyō, Ōsaka, Kōbe, Yokohama, and a score of other centers had been gutted. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were A-bombed. Under this pounding from the skies, the Japanese industrial machine collapsed, and production in the home islands came to a virtual halt. When the bombing stopped, one-quarter of the nation’s industrial capacity had been destroyed and another third of her physical plants had suffered severe damage. Eighty percent of the cotton textile plants had to be scrapped. Coal production deteriorated to the point where not enough coal was mined to operate railroads. Chemical production, so essential for industry and protection of public health, dropped to 21 percent of prewar years. The great steel mills of the nation were silent in the rubble, while the shipyards stood still, their rusting cranes and girders entwined in the stillborn vessels on the water. By November 1945, total industrial production in Japan had dwindled to 9 percent of the wartime peak.
More critical than the destruction of Japan’s industrial capacity was the chaotic dislocation of the food supply system. Historically a food-deficit country, producing only 85 percent of its requirements during the war, Japan for years had been importing about 3 million
tons of food a year, mainly from Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria. By 1946, the food distribution system was hopelessly snarled. Whereas during the war years, rice collection from farmers produced 36 million koku, only 19 million koku were collected from farmers in the crop year of 1946.1 If it had not been for the timely shipment to Japan of nearly 900,000 tons of food donated by the United States, thousands of Japanese would have died of starvation. As it was, thousands still suffered from malnutrition. In the cities, hunger and misery were prevalent as people struggled to survive in the rubble in primitive shelters, in rags, without heat, and without food. Life was endurable only on farms, nearest to the source of food.
To compound this unrelenting misery, the population of Japan continued to explode. By 1949, 5 million of the 6,614,000 Japanese nationals, military and civilians, had been brought back from Southeast Asia, China, Manchuria, Korea, the Soviet Union, and islands of the Pacific. These teeming millions, joined by some 5 or 6 million newly born by 1950, brought the population of the country to approximately 83 million. Compressed into an area about the size of California, limited by topography to 15 million acres of cultivated land, with their industry and world trade disorganized, the people of Japan seemed indeed forsaken by their ancestors. For the family, naked survival became the sole purpose and objective of life.
The Japanese, however, know how to endure, and the struggle for existence took on the pattern of a giant anthill that had become cruelly disturbed. Farmers hardly left their fields, praying for rain and fertilizer. Fishermen made their delivery runs with torn nets and inadequate fuel for their engines. Workers reported to gutted mills and factories hungry, cold, and inadequately clothed. Those who were fortunate to have employment in an office slept on their desks for lack of better shelter. Hundreds of thousands were unemployed, while thousands of others shared the same job, doubling up. A driver of a motorcycle, for example, had to have an assistant driver, who was forced to perch perilously somewhere on the front wheel. Jobs meant survival.
As the demand for necessities grew, a vast black market was born to supply the needs of the people in cities. In this new venture, the farmer became the man of the hour. He manipulated his harvest to outwit the government rice-collecting agencies. An extra koku of rice that could be hidden from the collector brought the farmer riches and economic power. The city slickers who operated the black markets in the cities now journeyed daily into the country to pay homage to their sources of supply.
A key person in the black market operations was the “rice carrier.” This was a specialist in some instances, in others the family provider. The specialist customarily made two or three trips into the country a day to load liberated rice into a knapsack or a bag and carry the white gold to his or her town or city. A seasoned rice carrier was especially adept at evading or buying off the police. Often the most successful rice carrier was the policeman’s wife.
While on the one hand the black market stimulated a fantastic surge in raw capitalism, producing many powerful black-market millionaires, the suffering of the masses in the devastated cities encouraged the growth of radical and subversive elements. The beleaguered housewives, waiting in line for their rice rations, were particularly susceptible to the influence of the radicals. Too often the ration distribution centers would run out of staples. On such occasions, the operator of the center would try to induce the housewives to accept sweet potatoes or some other substitute for rice. Only a Japanese person can understand what it meant to the women to be offered sweet potatoes instead of rice, their main staple. The radical provocateur, waiting for precisely such a breakdown in the distribution system, would rush forward to lead the housewives in a banzai charge on the rice warehouse. The provocateur would then capture the rice and distribute it to his women warriors. Nothing won the appreciation of the housewives so much as a successful fight for their rice rations. It is reported that the heavy vote that the Japan Communist Party (Nihon Kyōsantō) delegate Yoshio Shiga received in his campaign for the Diet, or national parliament, representing the city of Ōsaka at that time, was owing in great measure to the success of his agents at the food distribution centers.
During these tragic years, most of the people existed through the exigency of what became known as “bamboo shoot living.” In their struggle for survival, the Japanese literally peeled the very clothes off their backs, one layer after another, like peeling bamboo shoots, to buy food for themselves and their families. Clothes, valuables, and household goods were pawned, family treasures sold, even military medals were traded for a bowl of rice. Yet during all these trying times, I saw individual Japanese walking the streets with toothpicks prominently poised in their mouths as though they had just finished a satisfying meal. Most dramatic of all were the unmatched and unbent heroes who in the spirit of the ancient samurai hungered and suffered rather than do anything dishonorable or break the law. The nation was traumatically shaken one day when the distinguished judge in the Tōkyō District Court, Yoshitada Yamaguchi, died of starvation rather than dishonoring himself by going to the black market.
When Prime Minister Yoshida greeted the Korean War with his quiet “It’s the grace of heaven,” he was reacting only in part to the desperate economic situation that continued to face Japan in 1950. More important, Yoshida saw the Korean conflict as a God-given opportunity for an accelerated peace treaty and eventual independence for the nation. The “unconditional surrender” terms had brought to Japan American crusaders who tore the very fabric of the country, reorganizing the political, social, economic, and even religious patterns of the people. Japan trembled under the impact of these reforms and the consequences they ushered in.
The objectives of the occupation of Japan as formulated by the Allied powers and transmitted by the Far East Commission to the supreme commander for Allied powers (SCAP) were as follows:
1.To ensure that Japan will not again become a menace to the peace and security of the world.
2.To bring about the earliest possible establishment of a democratic and peaceful government that will carry out its international responsibilities, respect the rights of other states, and support the objectives of the United Nations. Such a government in Japan should be established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.
The Allied nations further agreed and directed SCAP that the above objectives should be achieved in the following manner:
1.Japan’s sovereignty will be limited to the islands of Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū, Shikoku, and such minor outlying islands as may be determined.
2.Japan will be completely disarmed and demilitarized. The authority of the militarists and the influence of militarism will be totally eliminated. All institutions expressive of the spirit of militarism and aggression will be vigorously suppressed.
3.The Japanese people shall be encouraged to develop a desire for individual liberties and a respect for human rights, particularly the freedoms of religion, assembly and association, speech, and the press. They shall be encouraged to form democratic and representative organizations.
4.Japan shall be permitted to maintain such industries as will sustain its economy and permit the exaction of just reparations in kind, but not those that would enable it to rearm for war. To this end, access to, as distinguished from control of, raw materials should be permitted. Eventual Japanese participation in world trade will be permitted.
Under these directives and policies, some of which were unusually harsh and restrictive but all of which were aimed at establishing a progressive modern democracy, General Douglas MacArthur, the fabulous supreme commander for Allied powers, carried on the greatest peacetime revolution the world has ever seen. First, the nation was completely and totally disarmed. Anyone remotely responsible for the war or supporting it, except the emperor, was purged. The purge list included all professional military officers, top politicians, and the nation’s most successful and influential industrialists, bankers, and businessmen. A new ultra-democratic constitution was forced upon
the country, humanizing the emperor, giving women the right to vote, and forever prohibiting military forces and war potential in the nation.
A host of American Army officers, DACs (Department of the Army civilians), consultants, economists, scientists, and all manner of experts scrambled over the rubble of Japan. The Japanese government, national and local, was reorganized. Americans introduced the election of governors, mayors, and hundreds of other officials who previously had been appointed to their post from Tōkyō. We helped the Japanese to recodify their laws and change their judicial system. We assisted in organizing labor unions, women clubs, farm and fishing cooperatives, and parents and teachers associations. We stimulated the Japanese to build new hospitals, to reform their penal system, and to reorganize their police forces. Proudly we guided the reorganization of a democratic educational program, initiated private and public welfare programs, and helped to establish an extensive system of medical care centers. Most significant, we introduced a land reform program in which the Japanese government achieved what the communists had promised when they had turned land over to millions of families who for centuries had worked the soil daily but had not owned it.
The Americans and the Japanese who labored on these great programs can be proud of a job well done. Some of the tax reforms may have been imposed autocratically and by coercion, but the result was to bring a great nation more completely into a progressive world.
From the American point of view, it was a benevolent occupation. We labored for Japan as conscientiously as we had fought for America. If there were mistakes, they were sincere mistakes stemming from lack of understanding of Asian culture rather than from malice. Many Americans returned to the United States thoroughly Nipponized, singing the praises of the Japanese people. On their side, thousands of Japanese admiring power, especially foreign power, became astonishingly American, or so it seemed.
An Inoffensive Rearmament Page 3
