An Inoffensive Rearmament

by Frank Kowalski

  Shortly we sat down to an excellent American-style dinner, reinforced with some fine wine. I was seated across and one chair over from the prime minister. Although it’s always difficult to talk through an interpreter, conversation in two languages at the dinner table, by its very nature, makes one feel especially inadequate and uncomfortable at times. As I talked to the prime minister, for example, he nonchalantly carried on with his soup. When I finished my comments, I would turn to my soup. Then, while the interpreter translated in my place, Mr. Yoshida, the other guests, and I would continue with our meals. Finally, the prime minister would say, “Ah, so,” and he would look up to smile at me. If he was more inclined to talk than to suck at his soup, he would push his bowl aside and deliver himself of his views. At such time, I didn’t see how I could stroke soup while the prime minister talked, so I would courteously and attentively sit at ease. When the prime minister stopped talking and the interpreter took over, I felt that I could return to my meal. Maybe I was wrong. As the maneuvers went on, I had an opportunity to look around the table. I noted that Major General Shepard and our staff members would stop all operations while the prime minister talked. This slowed the dinner considerably and was especially difficult for the interpreter. By the time the main course arrived, the comments by all were short and punctuated with long intervals of silence. Blessed by this learning process, the dinner went much faster.

  In my military assignments throughout Japan, I had become too keenly aware of Yoshida to have any illusions about the prime minister. Fundamentally a bureaucrat, Yoshida, in most respects, was a conservative. Now sitting near the prime minister, I reflected on the man and his emergence to power.3

  He was the product of the occupation of Japan. Under our policy of indirect rule in which Americans administered the nation and promulgated our revolutionary changes through the Japanese government, the bureaucracy of the country became indispensable. Moreover, with the military and the presurrender politicians purged by the occupation forces, the bureaucrats had an open field in politics and in the administration of the nation. A purge had precipitated Yoshida into the prime minister’s chair. Most of the new leaders of Japan, like Kijurō Shidehara, Hitoshi Ashida, and Mamoru Shigemitsu, had been former government officials and not politicians. Astute and ingratiating, these men and hundreds of other bureaucrats had formed strong personal links in the controlling sections of SCAP Headquarters. The Americans, for their part, dependent on the government and its bureaucracy, supported their “opposite numbers” not only in their official duties but in their personal ambitions. Yoshida did not suffer from the embrace of the supreme commander.

  I had been privileged, however, to observe the attitudes of too many layers of the Japanese bureaucracy at the city, prefectural, and national levels to entertain any ideas that the governmental structure of Japan was giving most of our reform programs more than a polite acquiescence. I sensed the farmers, labor leaders, teachers, students, and intellectuals generally appreciated our efforts, but precisely because these segments of Japanese society were motivated to action by American ideas, the bureaucrats were fearful of our innovations. Certainly no one would accuse Yoshida of any enthusiasm for SCAP directives that decentralized control of the police forces, emasculated the powerful Ministry of Education, encouraged the formation of democratic school boards, and stimulated, guided, and protected the development of a strong trade union movement. I make these observations not particularly to be critical of the Japanese bureaucracy and the politicians it projected into power, for there was normal opposition in Japan to our programs and the bureaucracy was only especially adroit in its surreptitious resistance. What I am suggesting is that it was much easier for Americans to show the Japanese people how their misguided and badly informed leadership led them into a disastrous war than to design corrective methods and new institutions acceptable to the aspirations of a foreign culture. That which fitted and worked satisfactorily in America did not necessarily fit and produce desirable results in Japan. One would have to be blind to not have recognized that many of the American-conceived programs were an anathema to the prime minister and the former government of officials who dominated the conservatives in 1950.

  Yoshida was a son of a wealthy family named Takeuchi, whose influence and power was deeply rooted in the politics of the Meiji revival. He was a devout royalist, totally committed to the throne. The emperor may have been used for evil in the past by militarists, but the imperial institution remained for Yoshida the central core on which the destiny of Japan rested. In common with the custom of many Japanese, Shigeru became the adoptive son of Kenzō Yoshida, an influential businessman and silk manufacturer. Yoshida’s future career was even more enhanced when he married in 1909 the daughter of Count Nobuaki Makino, who became foreign minister in 1913 and imperial Houshold Minister in 1921.

  Having attended Tōkyō Imperial University, the training school for all future government officials, Yoshida advanced steadily through the imperial diplomatic ranks. He served in China and Rome, and finally became ambassador to the Court of St. James. Essentially a diplomat with strong connections in political and business circles, Yoshida in the presurrender period was concerned chiefly with international affairs. Nevertheless, in 1936, when Prime Minister Kōki Hirota, who incidentally was a prominent member of the Black Dragon Society, was forming a new cabinet, he offered the foreign minister post to Yoshida, who at the time was considered a liberal. Yoshida accepted and was in the process of helping the prime minister select members for his cabinet when the army protested his appointment so furiously that Hirota was forced to drop him. The “Sakan,” or field grade of officers of the Army General Staff, had not forgiven Yoshida for his 1932 report estimating that the staffs of the foreign and naval ministries were unanimously agreed that “the Army should be restrained.” Moreover in the eyes of the militarists, Yoshida was too enamored with the British to be considered a safe risk for high imperial office.

  Serving as president of the Japan-British Society at the time of the outbreak of war in Europe, Yoshida felt compelled to go into virtual retirement. He was not so immobilized as to be completely inactive, however, for after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he managed to do himself inestimable good by smuggling to the interned American ambassador, Joseph C. Grew, his regrets over the war. He further qualified himself for acceptance by the occupation forces by being imprisoned for the last three months of the Pacific War for advocating peace negotiations through British channels.

  In the early days of the Japanese rearmament, Yoshida remained a firm antimilitarist. He personally supervised the screening of all officer candidates for the new military forces. It is extremely doubtful that many militarists of the former Imperial Army and Navy slipped into the NPR and the organization into which it evolved.

  When the supreme commander for Allied powers occupied Japan, Yoshida was brought into the government as head of the Foreign Ministry, and as previously discussed, he played an important role in the writing and final acceptance of the constitution in Japan. His opportunity fell upon him by accident. Ichirō Hatoyama, former minister and politician, having formed a successful party of conservatives, was elected to the Diet and was virtually assured of being named prime minister. But in a sudden switch of events, Hatoyama was purged by the occupation forces, and Yoshida was propelled into the prime minister’s office.

  The 1949 elections, however, which I observed closely, were no accident. The Japanese electorate, which in previous elections had voted for the middle parties, in 1949 became polarized, with large segments of the population attracted to the extremes on the right and left. While the Japan Communist Party gained strong support throughout the country, Yoshida was re-elected with a heavy conservative vote. He continued in power, promising to take a strong hand, in cooperation with the United States, against internal subversion and foreign communist pressure.

  With the dinner over, Yoshida sat back and began to puff on his cigar. Presently he got up, and we all moved
away from the table to sit down in some comfortable chairs in another room. I was fortunate to find a chair near the prime minister. He began talking quietly. He was obviously eager to impress all of us with the importance of the great program upon which we were jointly embarking. He was warm in his appreciation of General MacArthur for authorizing and directing the establishment of the NPR. He said that now that the American forces had departed Japan for Korea, Japan was a military vacuum. As prime minister, he was deeply concerned about the security of his country. He was glad that America permitted his nation to organize a police reserve, which he could use to support the police forces of the country. No government, he said, is worthy of the name if it does not have the means to maintain law and order. The NPR would give his government that power.

  I was favorably impressed by the prime minister and listened intently. The Korean War was going badly for us in those early months, and I wondered what the head of the Japanese government thought of the military action on the mainland. Waiting for a break, I interjected, “Mr. Prime Minister, how do you judge the Korean War to be going?”

  His response was direct and forceful. “It is a police action,” he said disdainfully. “The North Korean armies are coolie armies. They will be smashed by General MacArthur. As soon as you get some troops, tanks, and airplanes over there, the North Koreans will run like sheep.”

  I had only that day talked with one of our infantry battalion commanders who had been wounded and evacuated from Korea a few weeks before. The battalion commander was not as enthusiastic about our capabilities as was the Japanese prime minister, and I could not help but wonder who was right. I thought I sensed too much disdain for the Koreans in the prime minister’s voice, and later, as the Koreans continued to push our forces more tightly into the Pusan perimeter, I wondered whether Yoshida had not been unduly biased by his past experiences in Korea, Manchuria, and China. The Japanese army must have regarded the armies they fought on the Asian continent as “gooks” or coolies, very much as our own people tended to think of all Asians as “gooks.”

  My attention was drawn to the prime minister again as he continued to talk: “I am very happy that Japan can now show the United States that we are your friends. The Japanese people will show you their gratitude for your fine work in Japan. You will see. We will be your good friends.”

  “Will you send the NPR, Mr. Prime Minister, to help us in Korea?” I asked with a mischievous smile. I glanced at General Shepard. He was furious.

  “The NPR will never go to Korea,” answered the prime minister without a moment’s hesitation. The finality with which he answered my deliberate query rang with such positive conviction and sincerity that in the months ahead I never built up false hopes, as did other Americans, about the employment of Japanese forces in Korea. Then, very quietly, the prime minister began to unfold his basic views about the NPR and Japanese rearmament. “You must understand,” he said,

  my government is in a very difficult situation. We cannot rearm Japan at this time. The obstacles to rearmament are most difficult. We certainly cannot send the NPR to fight in Korea. To begin with, Japan has a constitution which bans all war potential. If you read your recent history, you have found that I did not want to go so far in the constitution. I was overruled by the Allied powers, and so we have a constitution that prohibits rearmament. It will not be easy to amend the constitution because that requires a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Diet. The opposition, mainly the Socialists, as you may know, holds more than one-third of the seats in the House of Councillors. They will not support my government on rearmament. I think it is also important to recognize that the people of Japan are not ready for rearmament. The occupation has done its job well. You have disarmed us actually and spiritually. You have turned the people not only against militarists but against everything military. You will recall that for a while you even took the pistols away from our police. Moreover, you have given the women the right to vote. They are more than 50 percent of the population, and they are against war and rearmament. You have read of our women marching into our stores and destroying our war toys. It will take a lot of hard work to re-educate the Japanese people. It is also a fact that Japan is a poor country. Our economy is just beginning to revive. We cannot finance rearmament. No, gentlemen, Japan cannot rearm. I am grateful, however, that the occupation forces have permitted Japan to organize and deploy a police reserve. This will provide a force for our international security. We will be able to defend Japan against subversion from within, and, if you do your job well and my people do theirs well, we may in time develop a force which will be able to defend Japan from attack from without. This must be a slow, gradual process, moving step by step. But most important we must educate our people on the need for such a force.

  Basically, in 1950 Yoshida was convinced that what he considered to be agrarian Russians were no match for the technologically advanced, highly industrialized Americans. He further regarded Red Chinese military power as composed of primitive coolie armies. Under these circumstances, he concluded that neither the Soviet Union nor Red Chinese nor a combination of both would dare to confront the United States in direct combat. Under the protective American umbrella, therefore, there was no need for any hurried rearmament in Japan.

  Moreover, Yoshida was very much aware of the deep-rooted suspicions with which Japan was regarded in Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian countries at that time. He preferred to adopt the helpless behavior of an aggrieved Mahatma Gandhi. At the same time, he knew that if he publicly showed a reluctance to rearm, he would tend to quiet any fears that Red China or the Soviet Union might entertain about Japanese military resurgence. The friendship of a politically neutral India, with whom a profitable trade was just opening, also had to be cautiously cultivated.

  On the other hand, there was severe opposition to the caution and reticence of the prime minister. Many of our people were laboring under the illusion of American omnipotence. Many thought that all we had to do was to order the Japanese to fight in Korea. In part this view of omnipotence stemmed from the conqueror concept that some of our military leaders assumed on occupying the Japanese islands. This was a natural pose that fighting troops assume upon crushing an enemy, but in the pleasant, agreeable occupation environment among an acquiescent, yielding population, even our American ladies and dependent children regarded themselves as great conquerors. The Japanese were always treated courteously by Americans, of course, but from a superior position. We were the Great Occupying Power.

  I remember an American Corps commander in his farewell speech at a large social gathering on the eve of his departure from Japan for the United States. He was haranguing the officers of his command and their ladies gathered to bid him good-bye that they should never forget that “we are the conquerors.” He concluded, “We’re too soft on these damn gooks anyway.”

  A few days earlier, I had seen this man give a most revolting exhibition of the “conqueror concept.” I was in an automobile following his sedan through a “downtown” street of a large city packed with Japanese vehicles, handcarts, streetcars, and pedestrians. I watched in horror as his car plowed through the mass of humanity, equipment, and animals. Then the inevitable happened: the sedan rammed into the rear of a stalled Japanese streetcar. I stopped my automobile as the general jumped out, followed by two aides. His face was livid red; he rushed forward to the front of the streetcar. As Japanese scattered in all directions, the American general caught the diminutive Japanese streetcar motorman by the neck and shoulders and began to shake him as a terrier might shake a small animal. Then, with a flood of obscenity, he threw the little fellow to the street. This was American omnipotence at its naked worst, but there were many smaller barons in the occupation forces who were convinced that all we had to do was command or lash out and 90 million Japanese would jump.

  The Japanese militarists, who considered the Korean War as a grand opportunity for their own ambitions, similarly found Yoshida’
s views inadequate. Although they were unable to come out publicly because they had been purged, they nevertheless conducted an aggressive underground campaign trying to stir those in government to launch an all-out rearmament. One of their most potent arguments was raising the specter of communist takeover. With the Americans committed to leave Japan for Korea, the militarists and their allies cried for immediate rearmament of Japan with troops who had not so long ago served in the Imperial forces.

  Prime Minister Yoshida, however, had a genuine horror of the military. During the war, he had been arrested and kept under close surveillance by the militarists and their thought police, and he had not forgotten the experience. He was not eager to take them into partnership now that he was head of the government.

  The Korean War might have been sent “by the grace of heaven” for Japan, but Yoshida knew he had to move slowly, carefully, and intelligently. When he received General MacArthur’s letter directing the initial rearmament of the nation, he made his decision. No matter how much pressure our commanders or diplomats tried to exert on him, Yoshida never wavered from his decision. He neither expanded the NPR nor accepted a single weapon for the force until he was satisfied that it was politically and diplomatically safe for Japan to take the next step forward on a gradual, quiet, unruffled, and deliberate march back to her appointed place in the sun. It is not without reason that his political colleagues had named him “One Man” Yoshida, as he called the shots and made his own decisions.

  Yoshida’s views together with the Basic Plan became the guiding policy for our Advisory Group in rearming Japan.

  CHAPTER SIX

  STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL

  The decision to exclude former military officers from the NPR was not an easy one to make. The new forces needed men with military experience, and there were thousands of former officers of the Imperial Army and Navy who were eager to serve in the new organization. Many Americans and Japanese thought that under the conditions of national emergency, it was stupid not to use them. But the world had not yet recovered from the terror of Nazi and Japanese militarism, and only a few of the most rabid American militarists dared to embrace the recently disgraced military men of Japan.