An Inoffensive Rearmament

by Frank Kowalski

  While my head wheeled as I tried to assimilate the implications of what General Shepard had just said, he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a top secret document. “This,” he said, handing the document over to me, “is the Basic Plan. I want you to read it over and over until you know every sentence by heart.”

  Then, while I thumbed through the Basic Plan that was to be the bible for the new Japanese military force, General Shepard continued, “The situation not only in Korea but here in Japan is serious. Our four divisions now stationed on these islands are all going to Korea. In a few weeks, except for the Air Force and a few Army Service troops, there will be no Americans left in Japan. We have a job to organize and train four Japanese divisions to take the place of the Americans. As you know,” he went on, “there are a quarter of a million American dependents, women, and children in Japan.”

  I don’t know rightly what I answered. My whole attention was concentrated on the Basic Plan, and I began to read hurriedly, trying impatiently to grasp the whole picture. When I finished reading, there were a million questions racing through my mind. As I looked up, General Shepard smiled and asked, “And now, what do you think?”

  “This is tremendous, General,” I answered. Then, realizing the honor that my boss had extended by selecting me as his chief of staff, I mumbled inadequately, “General, I’m honored with the assignment.”

  As quitting time approached that afternoon, there was consternation and confusion in the Civil Affairs Section, to which I belonged. We had our first top secret paper to secure overnight, and we had no adequate safe for the purpose. I consulted my assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Wellington Glover, but when I showed him the “Top Secret” label on the Basic Plan his eyes popped. His assistance at that moment consisted of helping me to worry, which he did sympathetically. Finally, our administrative officer, Chief Warrant Officer John W. A. O’Brien, a calm, solid soldier, came to our rescue, suggesting we deposit the document in the security room of the chief of staff at the Dai Ichi Building. Relieved by this suggestion, Colonel Glover and I strapped pistols on and, viewing everyone we passed with suspicious stares, walked hurriedly the several blocks to the Dai Ichi with the Basic Plan securely locked in a briefcase, and the briefcase in my left hand, closely watched by my assistant.

  At the Dai Ichi, I handed the document to the security sergeant, who glanced at it with such a complete lack of reverence that I hesitated to leave it in his care.

  “Oh, it’s the Basic Plan,” he said disdainfully.

  “Yes,” I answered, almost adding, “shh, not so loud.”

  As we left the Dai Ichi, Colonel Glover finally gathered sufficient courage to ask, “Say, Boss, what’s in that paper anyway?”

  “Sorry,” I answered very seriously, “can’t tell ya, but it’s hot.”

  Months later, when Glover and I handled thousands of top secret papers in the front office of the Advisory Group, we enjoyed many laughs as we recalled that hectic day when the Civil Affairs Section received its first top secret paper. I’ve often noted how deeply concerned everyone behaves when initially given classified information or documents and how blasé many become when security is an everyday matter.

  Under usual circumstances, organizing a military force in the face of a raging war would have demanded most stringent security measures, but in Japan we were faced with the requirements of not only keeping the enemy in the dark but keeping our friends from knowing what we were doing. The Japanese constitution prohibited maintenance of any kind of military force. The nation had renounced war and war potential forever. Accordingly, we could not initially even tell the Japanese officers that the NPR (or Kokka Keisatsu Yobitai) was to be the army of Japan.

  Because Japan was prohibited by the constitution from establishing an army, General MacArthur undertook the rearmament of Japan under the pretext of international authority. It had been agreed at Potsdam by the Allies that Japan could have a maximum of 200,000 police officers to maintain law and order. These, of course, were intended to be police and in no sense Army, Navy, or Air Force troops. Under this agreement, SCAP had authorized the Japanese to organize municipal police forces and National Rural Police (Kokka Chihō Keisatsu). MacArthur restricted the strength of these organizations to a total of 95,000 municipal police officers, serving in Tōkyō, Ōsaka, and other major cities and towns of Japan, and 30,000 police officers in the National Rural Police. The latter were organized and administered on a national basis and served throughout the country in villages and rural areas in units varying from four or five officers to several squads in locality. This gave Japan a total of 125,000 police officers, leaving 75,000 vacancies authorized under Potsdam.

  As the supreme commander for Allied powers, General MacArthur accordingly had the authority to expand the police force of Japan by 75,000. This he did in a letter he dispatched on July 8, 1950, to Prime Minister Yoshida directing the Japanese government “to establish a national police reserve of 75,000 men.” Note the rhetorical reasoning and the esoteric justification for augmenting police forces in a democratic society:

  TOKYO, JAPAN

  8 JULY 1950

  Dear Mr. Prime Minister:

  In my keeping with my established policy to re-invest autonomous authority in the Japanese Government as rapidly as the situation permits, I have visualized the progressive development of law enforcing agencies adequate to the maintenance of internal security and order and the safeguard of Japan’s coastline against unlawful immigration and smuggling.

  By letter of September 16, 1947, I approved the recommendation of the Japanese Government for an increase in the overall strength of Japan’s police force to 125,000 men, making provisions for a new national rural police force of 30,000 men. It was then the view of the government, in which I fully concurred, that the strength recommended and authorized was not an arbitrary determination of future police requirements but designated to provide an adequate force around which might be built a modern and democratic police system oriented to an effective decentralization of the police responsibility in harmony with the constitutional principle of local autonomy.

  Subsequent action in the recruitment, equipping and training of the police force then authorized has proceeded with commendable efficiency. The concept of autonomous responsibility has been faithfully observed, essential coordination has been carefully developed and the proper relationship between the police and private citizenry has been progressively forged. As a consequence, the Japanese people today may take justifiable pride in this agency for the enforcement of law at all levels of government. Indeed, it may be credited to both organizational police efficiency and the law-abiding character of the Japanese people that, despite a much lower police strength in relation to population here than is to be found in most of the other democratic states and the general post-war impoverishment and other adverse conditions usually conductive to lawlessness, Japan stands out with a calmness and serenity which lends emphasis to violence, confusion and disorder which exist in other nearby lands.

  To insure that this favorable condition will continue unchallenged by lawless minorities, here as elsewhere committed to the subversion of the due process of law and assaults of opportunity against the peace and public welfare, I believe that the police system has reached that degree of efficiency in organization and training which will permit its augmentation to a strength which will bring it within the limits experience has shown to be essential to the safeguard of public welfare in a democratic society.

  Insofar as maritime safety in the harbors and coastal waters of Japan is concerned, the Maritime Safety Board has achieved highly satisfactory results, but events disclose that safeguards of the long Japanese coastal line against unlawful immigration and smuggling activity requires employment of a larger force under this agency than is presently provided for by law.

  Accordingly, I authorize your government to take the necessary measures to establish a national police reserve of 75,000 men and expand the existing authorized st
rength of the personnel serving under the Maritime Safety Board by an additional 8,000. The current year’s operating cost of these increments to existing agencies may be made available from funds previously allocated in the General Account of the National Budget toward retirement of the public debt. The appropriate sections of the Headquarters will be available, heretofore, to advise and assist in the technical aspects of these measures.

  Very Sincerely,

  DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

  MR. SHIGERU YOSHIDA

  PRIME MINISTER OF JAPAN,

  TOKYO

  It is indeed an anomaly that General MacArthur, the man who liquidated the Japanese militarists and wrote the constitution prohibiting the nation forever from maintaining military forces, should, in this fashion, order the rearmament of Japan.

  Years later, the Japanese would argue about the inadequacies of the NPR as a military organization. Their military personnel, especially, would take great delight in blaming their politicians and civilian officials who initially staffed the headquarters of the force for failing to understand the basic requirements for a military establishment. What they all forgot is that the Japanese did not initiate the rearmament of their nation and that the constitution even today prohibits military force. Japan has an Army, Navy, and Air Force now only because General MacArthur, assuming international authority, expanded the police forces of the nation.

  MacArthur’s plan for the National Police Reserve initially envisioned a paramilitary force that could be later expanded into an army of four infantry divisions. In the surreptitious approach that had to be adopted, it was essential that in the beginning this force operate within the apparent limits of Allied agreements and the pseudo-legality of the new Japanese constitution. Proceeding with great caution, the planners decided the new force would be progressively equipped. The character of the organization, the caliber of the weapons, and the nature of the equipment were to be dependent on the receptivity of the Japanese people and the international situation. Obviously, it was to be a calculated, creeping rearmament tuned to the will of the Japanese public and the Allied reaction. Thus, from its inception, the NPR existed in the extremely uncomfortable twilight zone of questionable legality. As a result, during the initial phases of the organization, American military advisers with the NPR had to talk from both sides of their mouths, and the Japanese leaders of the force, except for a few who were in the know, were bewildered. One division commander, a former police chief, was genuinely disappointed when his units received M-1 rifles instead of police billy clubs.

  The original plan provided for a national headquarters, two corps or intermediate headquarters, a service force, and four regions or divisions. Each region was to be patterned after a U.S. infantry division. But because the original planners had to provide a maximum number of divisions out of the 75,000 total, the strength of an NPR region was pared to 15,200, about 3,000 fewer soldiers than a United States division at that time, which required ruthless emasculation of some of the divisional units. The NPR infantry, with four rifle companies and a strength of 1,000 soldiers, was a compromise between the U.S. infantry battalion and the extinct Imperial Japanese battalion. Everyone in the force was to be armed initially with a carbine as rapidly as possible (the Japanese public and Allied opinion permitting), with individual and organic weapons and equipment added as they became available.

  Significantly, the new security force was to serve as the direct instrument under the immediate control of the prime minister. As a national force, it was to be organized, equipped, and trained in such a way as to ensure immediate commitment in the event of an emergency. To enhance its character as a reserve, the force was to be independent of the National Rural Police force and municipal police, maintaining a separate and distinct entity.

  Initially there was considerable discussion at GHQ as to which American agency should organize, train, and control the NPR. Customarily, in organizing a foreign military force, we utilized military advisory groups. Faced with an illegal rearmament, though, we could not do this in Japan. Three agencies were nevertheless considered: the G-2 (Intelligence) Section GHQ, the G-3 (Operations) Section GHQ, and the Civil Affairs Section. The Intelligence Section, under its forceful and melodramatic chief, Major General Charles A. Willoughby, who was MacArthur’s principal historian and special confidant, exercised control over all Japanese police forces and wanted the NPR in its special domain. General Willoughby had been uniquely successful in organizing these forces and was prepared, as I shall discuss later, to rearm Japan rapidly and efficiently. Precisely for this eventuality, he had gathered under his control in the Japanese Demobilization Bureau an outstanding staff of former Japanese generals, admirals, and colonels. But General Willoughby had two powerful antagonists in GHQ, the G-3 Section, which was professionally opposed to Willoughby’s empire building, and Brigadier General Courtney S. Whitney, MacArthur’s chief of the Government Section, ghostwriter, aide extraordinaire, and bosom luncheon companion. Moreover, for reasons of military cover, it was highly desirable to place the new organization in what might be considered a government-oriented agency. The supervision of the NPR, accordingly, fell to Major General Shepard as chief of the Civil Affairs Section. Willoughby retained control of the initial recruiting for the force and shared with Whitney the power of screening and approving the top Japanese leaders.

  In a directive issued July 14, 1950, Major General Shepard was designated the general officer responsible for the development and control of the National Police Reserve and was authorized to communicate directly with agencies of the Japanese government on all matters pertaining to the NPR. In American channels, under the cover of Civil Affairs, he was directed to establish a military advisory and control staff to provide guidance to the Japanese government concerning the organization, equipment, training, and control of the force. In this same directive, the G-2, through its Public Safety Division, was given responsibility for furnishing guidance on matters related to recruitment, and the G-3 was responsible for providing guidance on initial deployment and subsequent utilization of the force.

  One of the most difficult problems that had to be faced was the question of who would be eligible to serve in the force. This immediately raised the issue of whether career military officers and others that had been purged should be excluded from the NPR. The advantages of using experienced military leaders in the NPR were apparent to all concerned. The former military leaders of Japan, however, had been purged in accordance with Allied international agreements, and their use in the NPR not only would have been a flagrant violation of the announced policy of the supreme commander for Allied powers, but would have caused serious repercussions in the Western world at a time when the United States was making every effort to lead the United Nations against aggression in Korea. Furthermore, though many of the former militarists and their supporters favored inclusion of career officers and those purged in the NPR, the Japanese people as a whole were deeply concerned about the clause in the constitution outlawing war. Moreover, they generally opposed rearmament and feared the use of ex-career officers in the NPR. The Japanese government, of course, recognized the practical handicap of organizing a paramilitary force without qualified leaders, but it was deeply concerned about the views of the Philippines, Australia, and other nations. Under the circumstances, it preferred to wait for reactions to the steps it was taking. Accordingly, in the initial plan it was decided that all those purged and all career officers of the Japanese Imperial Army, Navy, and Air Force would be excluded from the NPR. Nevertheless, despite the decision, the problem plagued all of us who worked with the force, and as I will show in a succeeding chapter, it caused a serious strain within the GHQ staff and created a fissure that spread to the Japanese.

  While General Shepard rushed from one conference room to another, my special mission as the chief of staff was to find and select the key American personnel for the organization. As Korea had a top priority for personnel, my initial reaction was to seize all the best offi
cers then assigned to the Civil Affairs Section, but Major General Shepard, retaining responsibility for both organizations, would not permit me to rob the parent unit. I managed, after much pleading, to obtain his concurrence to the assignment of Lieutenant Colonel William M. Albergotti, a field artillery officer, as G-3 of the new advisory and control group. The selection of Albergotti was a happy choice that neither Shepard nor I ever regretted. Albergotti was at that time serving as chief of the Education Division of the Civil Affairs Section. A solid citizen, mature, painstaking, tactful with determination, Lieutenant Colonel Albergotti turned in an outstanding performance in a critical assignment, accomplishing his mission with a minimum of fanfare. Cooperative and sincere in his operations with the Japanese, he laid the foundation for an understanding and mutual trust that remained for years. Master Sergeant Clifton E. Ratcliff was the second individual I succeeded in wrangling from the Civil Affairs Section. He became the top soldier of our organization. As my personal assistant, Sergeant Ratcliff played a varied role in the Advisory Group, exerting an influence on Major General Shepard, the staff, and the Japanese headquarters that far extended his rank. Working twelve and fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, Shepard, Ratcliff, and I became close personal friends. We argued with one another, even yelled at each other at times, but we were all loyal to the job, and Ratcliff and I had a high regard for our commander.

  The other key individuals of the initial staff were assigned to the group by the Far East G-1 and included Colonel Charles E. Knowlton, Adjutant General, who became our G-1; Lieutenant Colonel Harold R. Weetman, our G-4; and Lieutenant Colonel Paul A. Freyereisen, the comptroller. These were the men who initiated the rearmament of the nation. Other officers and noncommissioned officers were added to the staff as they became available.

  In addition to selecting the key members of our staff, our major task was to find a suitable office space for the national headquarters of the new force and for the American staff that would be required as advisers. After considering several possible locations in Tōkyō, G-1 GHQ resolved our worries by making available for our use the buildings of the former Japanese Tōkyō Maritime Training School.1 The U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment, part of the 1st Cavalry Division, moved into these facilities after the surrender and had since then enjoyed a most desirable location and home away from home. Now they were moving. When Major General Shepard and I visited the installation on July 15, the troops were loading into trucks and jeeps, preparing to embark for Korea. They were tired, unhappy-looking soldiers, loaded with packs and equipment, bidding good-bye to their friends and families. It was difficult to realize at that time that these “Tōkyō Commandos” of the 1st Infantry Division were to become heroes of Korea.