An Inoffensive Rearmament

by Frank Kowalski

  “What’s that?” he asked with a frightened look.

  “Relax, Major, you’ll find out soon,” I offered. After verifying his assignment with GHQ, I beamed with pleasure at the realization that my prayer had been answered with a real, live, and somewhat sleepy infantry major.

  I learned from Major Stevens that he had just arrived by plane from the West Coast. He said he had been on the move for about three days. He was exhausted. He had been told in the United States that he was going to Korea and now he wanted to know if there was anything he could do to get out of the NPR assignment. I did a superb sales job on him, if I say so myself, and as I began to unfold a small part of the plan for the new Japanese force, his eyes grew in excitement. I knew I had him.

  “Now, Major Stevens,” I continued. “You are going to take over one of the most challenging and exciting jobs you have ever had in the Army. You are going to be daddy to a new Japanese military force. You will organize, house, administer, equip, and train a Japanese infantry battalion, the first in the new Japanese army. And you’re going to do that without letting a single Japanese know that they are anything but part of a police force.

  “The Japanese National Rural Police, that’s like our state police, are assembling your new recruits at five of their police stations, in two-hundred-man groups. They are coming to your camp tomorrow, one thousand of them. They have no officers and no noncommissioned officers. You will get no Japanese officers or noncoms. They are raw recruits. If you are lucky some of the inductees may have been noncommissioned officers in the Imperial forces. They have no weapons and no equipment. When they arrive, they will not even have their mess kits, but they will be damn hungry and you better find some rice to feed them. The first thing you will have to do is set up some kind of organization to move them about. Select and appoint your own leaders. Get what help you can from the rural police, and God help you.

  “By the way, Major Stevens, have you ever been to Japan before?” I asked.

  “No, Colonel,” he smiled. “I have never seen a live Japanese until I got off the plane this morning.”

  “Well, OK then, you have no problems,” I said, smiling.

  “Your camp is here.” I pointed on the map. “It’s about a ten-hour train ride. Sergeant Ratcliff, my assistant, has shipped one thousand beds, mattresses, and pillows to your camp. They should be there tomorrow about the same time your men arrive. We are also shipping you a thousand carbines. Two American noncoms will report to you tomorrow. You’re practically a plutocrat,” I laughed. “Now, as soon as you house them and feed them, I want you to organize them into an infantry battalion. Colonel Albergotti, our G-3, will give you a table of organization. Most important, Major Stevens,” I emphasized, looking at him severely, “as soon as you receive your carbines, I want you to teach those men how to shoot. I mean load and shoot in a hurry. You can watch them hit something at a later time when you have time to do that. Right now teach them how to load and shoot. Do you understand?” I asked for further emphasis.

  “Yes, sir,” he answered.

  “Colonel Albergotti, our G-3,” I continued to instruct him, “will call the civil affairs officer in the area. He will meet your train and will be instructed to help you in every way possible. I will call the Japanese governor of the prefecture in which your camp is located. He will also meet you at the train. He’s a fine fellow and will take good care of you.”

  “And now, Major Stevens,” I said, looking at him sharply again, “never forget what I am going to tell you now. You will be the only one in your camp, the only one in your area for that matter, who will know that you are organizing an infantry battalion. Others, of course, will suspect it, but only you will know. As far as the Japanese are concerned, and that applies to all Japanese, the governor, the police, and the NPR, you are organizing a police reserve. The constitution of Japan prohibits an army. You will not call the men soldiers, and you will not call the officers by any military rank. If you ever see a tank, it isn’t a tank, it’s a special vehicle. You can call a truck a truck. Do you get what I’m saying?” I finally stopped.

  “Yes, sir,” he answered.

  “A lot of luck to you, Major. You will need it. Call me direct anytime.” I stuck out my hand and shook his warmly, congratulating myself that our first camp was on the way.

  “Sergeant Ratcliff,” I added, “will arrange your train transportation and will take you up to Colonel Albergotti.”

  When Sergeant Ratcliff took over, I couldn’t resist calling out after Major Stevens, “Get moving, Major, your train leaves in two hours.”

  Major Stevens did a splendid job. Most of the other Americans who followed him took over their respective camps with little more orientation than I was able to give him. Everyone sensed the urgency of the situation and appreciated the historical significance of the occasion and their own involvement, and they did their best.

  As we struggled with the recruiting program and plans for the reception and training of the new force, word must have gone out through logistical channels to give us immediate support. Suddenly one day CASA was shipped 75,000 U.S. M-1 carbines and a like number of U.S. Marine combat boots for distribution to our Japanese volunteers. We experienced no difficulty in fitting the wiry Japanese troopers to the carbines, but it was a considerable problem to fit the Marine combat boots to the small feet of our Japanese defenders. Undaunted, our new allies proceeded to cut down the boots to the feet of their new owners as unconcerned as an American soldier might be in altering his trousers. Whoever thought of sending us the combat boots was a genius, for footwear for the new soldiers was every bit as important as weapons. Many of the inductees that summer came sans shoes or in sneakers.

  During the months that the inductees were being processed and moved into camps, all planning and operational tasks had to be performed by Americans. For all practical purposes, the NPR became our creation and our creature. There was only a minimal Japanese staff assembled at headquarters, and the Japanese officials who were initially selected for the new army had little or no military experience. We were fortunate that the prime minister had assigned some fine executives of the National Rural Police to help the new force get started. These men performed Herculean tasks, but they thought and functioned naturally in terms of their police experiences.

  I don’t suppose there was ever an army organized quite in the manner we organized the NPR, and certainly there was never an American advisory group that functioned as we did in Tōkyō. In the United States, in the building up for World War II in Europe and Asia, we expanded our force by the cadre method. We would withdraw from a trained or semitrained organization a cadre of officers and men, 10 or 15 percent of the unit. This cadre then became the skeleton upon which we built and trained a new unit similar to the parent organization from which we took the cadre. The expansion was accomplished simply by bringing in recruits from civilian life. In Japan, we had no cadres. We had no headquarters, no cooks, mechanics, or supply personnel. We brought in raw civilian recruits, formed them into companies, and then gradually integrated the companies into battalions. It was a “do-it-yourself” job, with inductees organizing themselves. Six months later, we began to organize regimental and division headquarters. General Headquarters evolved as Japanese officers became available.

  In the meantime, CASA staff wrote the initial directives for recruiting, deployment, procurement, and training. American officers bargained with Japanese industry for uniforms, tents, mess equipment, and trucks. We even played an influential role in selecting and promoting officers and noncommissioned officers of the initial force. CASA in actuality, if not officially, commanded all NPR operations. Control over new equipment and camp facilities was completely in our hands. It was only after many months had elapsed that command and control was gradually turned over to Japanese commanders and governmental officials.

  While the initial NPR camps were being established, American forces were rapidly departing from Japan. After July 1950, only the 7th U
.S. Division remained, and it, too, was badly needed in Korea. It could not be sent over, however, until we could organize and deploy the NPR. As the Korean situation deteriorated, the demands for the 7th increased, and it was finally committed to depart Japan on September 10. This became a critical date for the NPR and a nightmare for CASA. When the 7th departed for Korea, a quarter million American dependents, women, and children, would be left behind in Japan.

  What was even more disturbing were frightening rumors that the Russians had deployed two Red Japanese divisions on Soviet-occupied Sakhalin, which lies only a few miles north of Hokkaidō. These rumors were never clearly verified, but reports persisted that the Russians had manned several divisions with Japanese prisoners of war taken during World War II on the Asian mainland. The Sakhalin troops were reported to be well-equipped and bursting with communist indoctrination. Their alleged mission was to invade Hokkaidō as soon as the 7th Division departed for Korea. Though these rumors were discounted by some, the communist capability to do damage was so real that they could not be entirely dismissed.

  In any case, CASA received instructions from GHQ to deploy ten thousand NPR personnel to Hokkaidō by September 10, the date scheduled for the 7th to embark for Korea. This was a formidable task. Hokkaidō is lightly populated and most of the ten thousand men had to be recruited in distant parts of Japan. Moreover, uniforms had to be fabricated, Marine boots cut down, and supplies and weapons channeled to meet the inductees. The most critical problem was housing for the troops. Hokkaidō, like Montana, is not very hospitable country in the fall and winter. The Japanese preferred the warmer climate in the south and moved to Hokkaidō only under pressure. Except for the camps occupied by the 7th Division, barrack facilities were extremely limited on Hokkaidō. We had no choice but to wait for the 7th to clear before we could move in the NPR.

  Under these difficult circumstances, we scheduled the induction and movement so closely that our NPR trains actually closed in on the American camps in Hokkaidō as the trains loaded with the 7th Division troops and equipment departed their stations for Korea. We viewed the situation so critical that we assigned teams of American instructors on the NPR trains going north to teach the Japanese inductees en route how to load and fire their carbines. Many of the NPR members were recruited off the streets in Tōkyō, processed through their induction centers in two days, loaded into trains, and taught to shoot before they arrived at their destinations. The moves were executed with precision and great skill. Colonel John Drinkent, who was given responsibility for all NPR units in Hokkaidō, and his staff deserve major credit for the operation. On September 10, 1950, ten thousand Japanese assembled on Hokkaidō ready and eager to thwart any ambitions that the communists may have had in the area.

  We never had to employ the NPR in a fight against the Red Japanese divisions rumored to be assembled in Sakhalin, but I wondered what kind of performance our Japanese, armed with our brand-new carbines and shod in cut-down Marine combat boots, would have turned in.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ORGANIZATIONAL PROBLEMS

  On July 18, 1950, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsuo Okazaki announced at a press conference in Tōkyō that the prime minister had selected the man to head the National Police Reserve. We were all excited by the announcement, eager to have a Japanese official assume responsibility for the force. As it was, we were making important basic decisions on the NPR with which the Japanese government and the nation would have to live. Moreover, it was extremely awkward for an American staff to commit Japanese funds that under the circumstances were required for immediate supplies for the organization.

  We were very pleased when on July 23, Mr. Keikichi Masuhara, a career government official and the governor of Kagawa Prefecture at the time of his appointment, resigned his prefectural office and presented himself to General Shepard as the director general designee of the NPR. For three weeks, while the prime minister delayed promulgation of the Potsdam Ordinance that was to establish the NPR, the director general valiantly struggled to learn his new job. On August 14, 1950, the Diet having recessed, Mr. Masuhara, standing in the presence of the emperor and Prime Minister Yoshida in the Imperial villa at Hayama, was sworn in as the first director general of the National Police Reserve. On the same day, Mitoru Eguchi, a Labor Ministry (Rōdōshō) official, was formally appointed assistant director general. For all intents and purposes, Mr. Masuhara became the first minister of defense of postwar Japan.

  Though I have never succeeded in evaluating and understanding Mr. Masuhara, reserving in my mind an unexplained uncertainty about him, I was favorably impressed when I met him for the first time in General Shepard’s office. A handsome Japanese with a strong, expressionless Asian face, his loud voice drew my attention at our first meeting and many times subsequently. He had a tendency to boom out his queries and answers unlike most Japanese, who in conversations with Americans talked in subdued tones, sometimes in an almost whisper. During the two years I worked with the director general, I learned to respect his straightforward answers and inflexible will. On occasion, he was a veritable mule, and he showed signs of intentionally misunderstanding questions. He was, nevertheless, always dignified, displaying a warm sense of humor.

  Though formally Japan was still an occupied country, General Shepard received the new director general as a dignified representative of a foreign government, setting thereby a pattern of behavior for the Advisory Group that differed distinctly from the conqueror complex practiced by so many of the SCAP officials. From the first visit, Mr. Masuhara was made to feel that he was the head of a Japanese agency with the American staff organized to assist him. An alert, patriotic Japanese, he accepted his position gracefully, in return setting a pattern of intelligent cooperation for the members of the NPR, which from those early days formed the basis for coordinated U.S.-Japanese operations.

  In the initial conferences between General Shepard and Mr. Masuhara, I sat quietly in the office taking copious notes, interjecting an occasional suggestion. It was during these conferences that the fundamental policies regarding organization, procurement, supply, training, and operations were painstakingly developed. These policies reached after slow, deliberate consideration by one of Japan’s most practical politicians were truly historic, laying a solid foundation for the future army of Japan. In these talks, the initial spirit of military cooperation between the two countries was born and the basic procedures for the joint employment of our forces carefully developed.

  As Mr. Masuhara initially spoke English with difficulty (he learned rapidly) and General Shepard did not speak Japanese, these historic conversations were laboriously conducted through a female interpreter, Nicky Endō. Having served for approximately two and a half years in military government and civil affairs throughout Japan, I had a wide experience in conducting business with the Japanese. I found from this experience that my conversations and negotiations were most effective when I made use of interpreters who were Japanese nationals. I had been disappointed early in Nisei (Japanese-American second-generation) interpreters because they invariably tried to dominate the Japanese. They did not as a rule know the Japanese language well, and some of them, I regret to say, had their own special axes to grind.

  From the very first, Nicky and I became friends, and I had to agree with the general that Nicky was smart and an outstanding interpreter for the chief of the Advisory Group. On several occasions, top Japanese officials purporting to be speaking for Mr. Masuhara urged me to ask the general himself to get another interpreter, but though I used my most persuasive arguments, General Shepard remained loyal to Nicky. I mention this problem with Nicky because interpreters serving as communication mediums play a tremendously important role in discussion between nations.

  Because Mr. Masuhara had very little military experience, limited to a short tour as a lieutenant in the Service Corps of the Japanese Imperial Army during the war, he naturally relied on the advice and listened intently to the views of the CASA chief. Recognizing his l
imitation, Mr. Masuhara asked questions about everything. The discussions accordingly developed into educational seminars, with General Shepard a patient, courteous teacher and the director general an enthusiastic student, eagerly imbibing the words of the master.

  Early in the discussions, it became apparent that there was a fundamental difference in what Mr. Masuhara thought the NPR Headquarters should be and our traditional American view of a military department. For a long time, the director general and his assistants did not understand what we were talking about, and we in turn, so accustomed to our own concepts, couldn’t comprehend what he proposed.

  In the traditional Western view, we envisioned NPR Headquarters in Tōkyō as a defense ministry, with a civilian element and a military staff. The civilian element, as in our own Department of Defense, was to be responsible for the political, budgetary, and overall policy direction of the establishment. The military echelon we viewed as a national headquarters staff responsible for operations of the force. We equated the director general of the NPR with our secretary of defense and considered him the civilian head of the military establishment.

  As the discussions went on, it became evident that Mr. Masuhara had either been briefed inadequately or else he did not understand the mission and purpose of the new organization. He viewed himself as the head of a police force and liked to compare himself with Chief Noboru Saitō of the National Rural Police. Under the circumstances, he saw no purpose for organizing two elements—separate civilian and military echelons—in the NPR. He wanted one large staff under his command to operate the NPR as any police force in the world is operated. We wanted a separate civilian policy staff that would control an operating military headquarters. The distinction was vitally important to us because we wanted to establish in the beginning the principle of civilian control over the military. If we permitted the director general to organize a single control group under his direct command, we were afraid that at some later date, a military man, on becoming head of the force, would be in a position to re-establish the notorious power of the militarists.