An Inoffensive Rearmament

by Frank Kowalski

  During the discussion in the Diet, there was deep concern regarding the meaning of Article 9. Members wanted to know whether Japan by this provision was, in fact, renouncing the inherent right to self-defense and was banning armed forces even for self-defense. Yoshida, who in the meantime had become prime minister, responded on June 26, 1946, to these questions in the Diet as follows:

  The provision of this draft concerning the renunciation of war does not directly deny the right of self-defense. However, since Paragraph 2 of Article 9 does not recognize any military force whatsoever or the rights of belligerency of the state, both wars arising from the right of self-defense and the rights of belligerence have been renounced. The recent war was largely fought in the name of self-defense . . . one of the serious suspicions or misunderstandings about Japan today is that Japan may endanger world peace by rearming and fighting a war of revenge at any moment. I believe that the first thing that we must do today is to correct this misunderstanding before anything else.

  In this statement, Prime Minister Yoshida made it clear that the official position of the Japanese government was that Article 9 prohibited rearmament even for self-defense. Nevertheless, Hitoshi Ashida, chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Constitutional Reform (Shūgiin Kenpō Kaisei Iinkai), proposed two amendments (shown in italics below) to the clause renouncing war, changing Article 9 to read:

  Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people, forever, renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation, or the threat or use of force, as a means of settling disputes with other nations.

  In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

  It is interesting to note that the amendments were taken to SCAP for clearance. General Whitney discussed the implications of Ashida’s changes with his staff and was aware that the new phrase might be interpreted to mean that in the future Japan could establish a self-defense force. He nevertheless approved the amendment. Five years later, Ashida claimed that it was his intent precisely to modify Article 9 so as to permit self-defense forces in the future. If that in fact was his intent, he never publicized his views during the six-month debate that went on in the Diet. Moreover, Prime Minister Yoshida consistently held the position that the maintenance of armed forces, even for self-defense, was denied by Article 9.

  After the most searching deliberations in the Diet and extensive discussions in the press, the House of Representatives passed the new constitution on October 7, 1946, and the House of Councillors (Upper House) passed it on October 29, 1946. The constitution was promulgated on Emperor Meiji’s birthday, November 3, to go into effect six months later on May 3, 1947.

  There is no doubt that the Japanese resisted their constitution. They did not want it. It was forced upon them by the supreme commander over their most serious objections. When Dr. Matsumoto tried to include a loophole that would permit limited rearmament at a future date, presumably after a peace treaty, General MacArthur personally stepped in to direct that “no Japanese Army, Navy, or Air Force will ever be authorized.” The idealism engendered by this forced feeding crumbled when Japan regained a measure of its independence.

  For several years after the constitution was adopted, it was the well-publicized view of the United States and the Japanese government that Japan could not rearm. Article 9 was uniformly accepted as a prohibition against rearmament. This view of course was shattered in 1950 when American occupation forces moved from Japan to Korea. Faced with a completely disarmed Japan, General MacArthur ordered Prime Minister Yoshida to organize, equip, and train a so-called National Police Reserve. Through American channels he directed our military to organize, train, and deploy a Japanese military force of four infantry divisions. This force would in time be armed with rifles, machine guns, mortars, tanks, artillery, rockets, and aircraft.

  The attempt to justify such an organization and such armament in the face of the legal prohibitions of the constitution and the legislative record made during the 1946 debates in the Diet was pure sophistry. I had a difficult time trying to keep up with the sleight of hand that the Japanese judges, officials, and people employed to make Article 9 disappear, but as far as the Americans were concerned, no one gave the Japanese constitution a moment’s thought. General MacArthur’s noble experiment of 1946 went up in a puff of smoke in the war environment of 1950.

  While the successive conservative governments passed through several deplorable stages trying to justify the legality of the new military forces, initially contending that the NPR was not an army, later arguing that in the modern world a nation that did not have nuclear weapons did not possess armed forces, and finally maintaining that Japan possessed the inherent right to defend itself, the opposition political parties insisted nonetheless that the constitution was being violated. Following the establishment of the NPR and the stationing of American military forces in Japan after the peace treaty, numerous attempts were made to bring the constitutional questions to courts. In March of 1959, at the height of controversy over the revision of the security treaty, the Tōkyō District Court ruled that the establishment of American bases in Japan was unconstitutional. Our forces nevertheless remained in Japan and in December the Japanese Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Tōkyō District Court, ruling that having American military forces stationed in Japan did not violate the constitution. On the question of the constitutionality of the Japanese military forces, there were no definitive findings until 1961, when the Japanese Supreme Court ruled that a nation possesses the inherent right to defend itself against attack. These decisions, however, have been unacceptable to a large segment of people, and the opposition parties continue to resist expansion of the armed forces and the stationing of American troops in Japan.

  In addition to Article 9, there are two other articles in the constitution that posed and still present serious legal obstacles to any rearmament program. These are:

  Article 18. No person shall be held in bondage of any kind. Involuntary servitude except for punishment of crimes is prohibited.

  Article 76. The whole Judiciary power is vested in a Supreme Court and in such inferior courts as are established by law.

  No extraordinary tribunal shall be established, nor shall any organ or agency of the Executive be given judicial powers.

  All judges shall be independent in the exercise of their conscience and shall be bound by this Constitution and the laws.

  Article 18 prohibits involuntary servitude. This is interpreted to mean that there can be no compulsory service in the armed forces. There can be no draft or universal military service. Even in an emergency or war, no one can be drafted into the military forces. Up until recent times, though there have been some problems, the Japanese have experienced no critical difficulties in recruiting for the limited forces the country maintains. What will happen if there are not enough volunteers to fill the future military requirements is anyone’s guess. It is difficult to believe, however, that a nation of 100 million people can indefinitely continue under a constitutional restriction that prohibits a draft in time of war.

  Even more important is Article 76. This article is interpreted to mean that the Japanese military establishment cannot have a court-martial system. At the time we organized the NPR and up to the present, armed forces personnel were subject only to civil courts. In the days of the NPR, the most serious action that could be taken against a man for a military offense was to give him administrative discharge. Yet I was amazed to find the NPR soldiers, in the performance of the most demanding tasks, to be efficient, effective, and as disciplined as any troops I served with. Nevertheless, the Japanese army, navy, and air force, today known as the Ground Self-Defense Force, Maritime Self-Defense Force, and Air Self-Defense Force respectively, are the only military forces that I know of in the world to exist without court-martial autho
rity. It is inconceivable that this situation would be tolerated in the event of a national emergency.

  Why then wasn’t something done during all these years to amend the constitution? The answer is simple arithmetic. The successive governments of Japan have not had the votes in the Diet to change the constitution.

  To amend the constitution of Japan requires, as a first step, a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Diet. The revision must then face a referendum. In 1950, and since that time, the government party on various occasions has had sufficient strength in the House of Representatives to muster a two-thirds vote. In the House of Councillors, however, the Socialist Party, together with various splinter parties, have maintained enough strength to block any government effort to change the constitution. And so, in recent years, a balance has been struck in the Diet that permits the nation to maintain military forces despite constitutional obstacles while the opposition prevents all attempts to correct the conditions that engender the obstacles.

  Human behavior, however, adjusts rapidly to strange twists and turns. Initially, when we began equipping the NPR in 1950, everyone cautiously tried to limit the nature and caliber of weapons, anxious to avoid accusations of rearmament. Today, the Japanese forces are equipped with the most modern conventional weapons and munitions available in a bristling world. In the future, unless the people, fearing retaliation, object at the ballot boxes, the government can be expected to accept American nuclear and even biological weapons. Article 9 has been so completely disregarded that the Japanese governments have behaved as though the no-war, no-arms clause never existed.

  On the other hand, Articles 18 and 76, which have had a most critical impact on the composition and discipline of the military forces, are obeyed as though they were hewed in stone. And so while Article 9 was relegated to the ash can, the other two articles have remained sacrosanct from the time the NPR was organized.

  The three articles examined above have had a traumatic impact on Japan, its people, and the military forces we initiated with the establishment of the NPR. Article 9 stifled our initial organization and training efforts, while Articles 18 and 76 have warped and crippled these military forces in their development. But who knows how damaging has been the hurt to the inner soul of a people who have been forced to trample upon national idealism, grinding their constitution underfoot? And who knows how severely justice has been twisted by a nation’s judges floundering to find a way to give their army, navy, and air force constitutional validity?

  Japan has moved through history in strange and erratic ways. It may again in time find its rightful place in the sun. In the recent past, it has gone through critical extremes. Rising from an idyllic slumber in the middle of the nineteenth century, it burst upon the world three decades ago in full-blown militarism. Defeated in the Pacific War, the people accepted, indifferently at first, then with conviction, an idealistic constitution, dedicated to world peace, forsaking war and renouncing armed forces and military potential forever. Then, once again under our prodding, the nation turned its back on its noble aspirations, marching over its constitution into an uncertain and confused future. In retrospect one wonders, why did we have to play God with these people?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  YOSHIDA’S VIEWS

  After the cabinet order establishing the NPR had been duly promulgated, Major General Shepard and the key members of our staff were invited to a dinner given by Prime Minister Yoshida at his official residence in Tōkyō.

  As I rode in the Army sedan that afternoon with the general, I was acutely conscious of the historical significance of the occasion. Japan was being rearmed. We were to be artisans, or, more correctly, the midwives at the birth of a new military force in the world. The prime minister of a great nation had invited us to meet him and get acquainted with the top leaders of his government. As the men of two nations whom fate had selected to build the new military forces of Japan, we would be looking each other over very carefully. The talk would be subdued, but what was said then by the Japanese I knew would become the fundamental policy of Japan on rearmament. I wondered what Yoshida would have to say.

  The descendants of the immortal tennō were helplessly caught in the furious crosscurrents of history. After a tragic and catastrophic war, Japan was being reshaped politically, socially, and economically by a foreign power. And now, with the eruption in Korea, destiny dictated that Japan should once again have a military force. As though playing a huge joke, though, destiny arranged that this force was to be organized, trained, and deployed by a Yankee general, a colonel whose parents had been born in Poland, an operations officer of Italian blood, a comptroller of German ancestry, and others who only a few days before had seen Japan for the first time. The samurai in their ancient graves must be whirling, I thought, at this turn of events.

  The prime minister and the leaders of this proud and dignified people could only hope that these conquerors possessed the ability and the skill to build something worthwhile. If we did not, then the Japanese people could only pray that the holy spirit of sun goddess Amaterasu visited upon the ancestors of these sacred islands could not be destroyed. After we had left, the future leaders of Japan could correct everything else if American military tutelage did not corrupt the flame of patriotism and devotion to country that burned in the hearts of the people of Japan.

  For my part, I was a little sad that Japan was to be rearmed. Whatever were the forces that motivated America to write a Japanese constitution banning war forever, I viewed the effort as a noble human goal. A nation of 90 million people had renounced war and all war potential. Humanity, or at least a considerable segment of it, seemed to have taken a crucial turn away from violence as a way of settling international controversy. Man, here in the East, appeared to be genuinely trying to fashion himself in the Christian image of God. Now that noble human aspiration was to be crushed. A “Great Lie” was unfolding in which America would join and in which I would personally join. A “Great Lie” that would declare to the world that the Japanese constitution did not mean what it said. A “Great Lie” that soldiers, guns, tanks, cannon, rockets, and airplanes were not war potential. The written constitution of a nation, perhaps the greatest political achievement of mankind, was to be dishonored and trampled upon by the United States and Japan. For the constitution of Japan, which America inspired, clearly prohibits a military establishment and outlaws war and all war potential forever.

  As I rode along that day, I wondered what might have been the situation in the world if the North Koreans had not marched south, if Japan had remained, say for a decade, a living nation without a military force. Could it have remained without armaments for as long as ten years? I don’t know. Who can tell what might have happened had America accepted General MacArthur’s recommendation in 1946 to place Japan under a United Nations mandate?

  As the situation developed in 1950, with the United States committed to a ground war on the Asian mainland, national self-interest necessitated the rearmament of Japan and excused, in our minds at least, any violence that we contemplated to the constitution of another nation.

  The die is cast, I said to myself. If Japan was destined to be rearmed, it was perhaps best that we should be the ones to control the rearmament. If we tried hard enough, we might at least be able to build a democratic military force, dedicated to the people and subject to the control of the representatives of the people. One thing was certain: it was important that we carefully tend this new military sprout to make sure that the roots got a good start. Someone once said, “As the twig is planted, so grows the tree.”

  “I wonder,” I said aloud to myself.

  “What did you say?” asked General Shepard, roused from his own inner thoughts.

  “Nothing, General. I was just wondering what kind of an army we’re going to build.”

  “That’s a good question,” he answered.

  We had arrived at the prime minister’s residence, and I followed General Shepard into the reception room. Prime Min
ister Yoshida, his round little body clad in a black kimono and his feet relaxing in white tabi, came forward a few steps to greet us with a warm, gracious smile.1 I studied Yoshida for a moment. I found that I liked him. Even in his quaint traditional Japanese attire, he seemed to be a regular fellow. As I bent forward in the low bow, I noted that he had a pleasant, roundish face and that his eyes twinkled with a friendly alertness. I had the feeling that I was seeing a man poured in a dual mold—a jolly little Japanese Santa Claus, sans whiskers, and a stubborn, efficient business executive. I muttered something about being honored to meet him, and his eyes gave me their full air of attention for a moment. He clasped my hand in his and turned to meet Colonel Albergotti, who was following me. I moved on to be introduced to four members of Yoshida’s cabinet, each minister dressed in a dark, Western-style business suit and each looking efficiently pleasant.

  Presently, I found myself with an interpreter and the minister of justice, Takeo Ōhashi, in the prime minister’s beautiful little garden. As I openly admired the inspiring handiwork of the skillful Japanese partnership with nature, Mr. Ōhashi was telling the exciting story of the historic assassination of a previous prime minister in this quiet garden.2 I knew that tragic story of how the militarist cut down a prime minister for the glory of Japan, but hearing it from the justice minister here in the cool shadows of the prime minister’s garden, I fully expected at any moment to see the historic characters once again live through their roles.

  Then, for some stupid reason, probably self-conscious of my Army uniform, I laughed and nervously blurted out, “Well, anyway, Yoshida-san has nothing to fear from us; we’re not Japanese militarists.”

  Mr. Ōhashi looked at me quite awkwardly, and I didn’t blame him. I heard the interpreter translating. “No, that’s right, but there are still many militarists in Japan,” replied the justice minister, and he appeared deeply concerned.