One day, while examining a Japanese budget that had been translated into English and which itemized costs for rehabilitation of one of the new camps, I was amazed at the unusually large sum, almost 10 percent of the entire amount, that had been set aside under the term “roofing.” Suspecting chicanery, possibly a separate deal for a roofing contractor, I called in our comptroller. When I showed him the item, he howled.
“That’s a good one,” he began. “The budget was prepared by one of the ‘hundred stuffs’ at the NPR Headquarters and was translated into English by one of their interpreters. You notice here that the item ‘roofing’ is roughly 10 percent. It was added to the Japanese budget as ‘overhead.’ Japanese ‘overhead’ was then translated into the English term ‘roofing.’”
One day, I visited a Japanese camp on an inspection tour. During the briefing, the battalion commander told me that he had just received his company safes—five of them, one for each company—and he didn’t know how he was going to get them into the barracks. He said he was further troubled because he was told American company commanders took their company safes with them into the field. He didn’t see how the Japanese could do that. I was surprised since I visualized the typical small metal box that American company commanders are issued to secure their limited papers and items of special value.
“Let me see your safes, Superintendent,” I suggested, and he took me to a platform behind headquarters. There they were, five massive upright safes weighing several tons. I later learned that the Japanese logistical section of the General Group Headquarters, in determining allowances for Japanese organizations, used our American table of organization and equipment. This table showed that each unit was issued a “company safe.” In the translation and subsequent procurement, General Group Headquarters cornered the market on safes in Japan.
We had a similar experience with absorbent cotton. When the American table of allowances was translated into Japanese tables, NPR Headquarters bought enough absorbent cotton to fill requirements for medical cotton for the force for the next 180 years. I was told that the price of absorbent cotton in Japan went up around 300 percent and the NPR later was able to sell the item at a profit.
While the absorbent cotton transaction was in full swing, Colonel Julian Dayton, a hard-boiled old infantryman, was opening a camp for three thousand Japanese troops. On the day his troops arrived, he called me on the phone. “Frank, damn you,” he began. “I have three thousand Japanese sitting in the barracks waiting for chow, but I can’t feed them because your damn headquarters hasn’t delivered our mess equipment. I’ve got the rice and fish heads but nothing to put them in.”
“Settle down, Julian,” I said. “Our G-4 insists you should have the mess kits and other gear there now. He said it was shipped by train and the Japanese should have the train there now on your siding. Look around, will you.”
Suddenly Julian broke with, “Wait a minute, Frank. I’ve just been told that there are four carloads of something on our tracks. Hang on, I’ll call you back.” Fifteen minutes later when I raised the phone, Julian was coming through the wire. “You dumb son of a bitch. You know what you sent me? Four carloads of absorbent cotton.”
Months later, when I saw Julian at an NPR cocktail we downed a goodly number of scotch and sodas laughing about that shipment of cotton.
CHAPTER NINE
LEADERS FASHION ARMIES
Gradually NPR Headquarters (the civilian echelon) and the General Group (the uniformed headquarters) began to fill up with senior government officials. As I reviewed the background and experiences of these new members of the Japanese defense establishment, I noted that all but one of the top appointees were graduates of the Law Department of Tōkyō Imperial University, now the University of Tōkyō. The lone exception was Mitoru Eguchi, who became deputy director general of the NPR and as such was the number two civilian official. Eguchi was a graduate of the Kyōto Imperial University, now Kyōto University. As so many others have observed, the men of Tōkyō University and to a lesser degree those of Kyōto University govern Japan.
I also noted as I had previously observed in military government, that Japanese executives all enjoyed what appeared to be carefully planned diversified assignments and career experiences. I was told that upon graduation from university, selected young individuals were initially assigned and subsequently moved from one government assignment to another with a view of developing them for high-level positions in the national and local governments. Before the occupation, when all the key officials in the national prefectural and city governments were directly appointed by the Imperial administration in Tōkyō, it was understandable how selected officials could be shifted in the direction of the central government from one prefecture to another, from the prefectures into Tōkyō, or from Imperial Bureaus to prefectural assignments. What amazed me when I served in military government, after we introduced election of governors and other local officials, was to find the chief of the Labor Bureau of Shimane Prefecture, for example, suddenly appear as a chief of the Economic Bureau in Kyōto Prefecture. These shifts I found were being made all over Japan. The governors may have been elected by the people of the prefectures after 1947, but I suspect that their labor commissioners and other officials were being assigned to them by someone somewhere in a central agency controlling such matters in Tōkyō. I do not mean to be critical of the system; it has much to be recommended, and I only mention this situation to illustrate that democracy has many facets. We, of course, view local autonomy as a system in which the people of that area elect and control the officials who govern them. There are other views. Accordingly, if we hope to police the world, as some desire, it is important that we realize that often what seems alien and unworkable to us serves others most adequately in their environment and society.
State Minister Takeo Ōhashi, who came from an illustrious Japanese family and who was serving as the attorney general of Japan, was assigned, in addition to his legal duties, responsibility for the National Police Reserve in the cabinet and became the spokesman for the government on defense matters. Initially, State Minister Ōhashi supervised NPR activities in a detached manner from his office in the cabinet, but gradually his visits to NPR Headquarters became more frequent and his influence increasingly more apparent. By early 1952, he was participating actively with American advisers and former Imperial generals close at hand in arranging for the development and equipment of the future military forces of Japan. In the meantime, Mr. Masuhara, as the director general, had direct responsibility for planning, organizing, and training the NPR.
Both Mr. Masuhara and Mr. Eguchi, as the civilian heads of the force, spent much of their time, as do our own secretaries of defense, appearing before committees of the Diet answering questions. Experienced government officials, their answers addressed to resolving the ambiguities of the NPR, would have qualified either one for the high political tightrope walk in any parliament of the world.
In accordance with our American concept of civilian control over the military, we encouraged the chief of the General Group Headquarters, General Keizō Hayashi, and his deputy, General Yujirō Izeki, a former official of the Foreign Ministry, to stay away from the Diet and Japanese politicians. This created some confusion and at one point caused a severe rift between General Hayashi and Mr. Masuhara. The director general’s office, however, was learning rapidly, and the men in uniform were subordinated to the civilian echelon, particularly on political matters.
General Izeki, who spoke English fluently and handled his scotch adroitly, as a Foreign Ministry official should, was a favorite with Americans. In his relations with the advisers, he assumed a relaxed, indifferent attitude. He remained in uniform for only about a year before he returned to his career as chief of the International Cooperation Bureau (Kokusai Kyōryokukyoku). In the year that he served with the NPR, his major contribution, as far as I was concerned, was to provide a high-level liaison between American and Japanese headquarters. Whenever difficulties
or misunderstandings arose, General Izeki would come to me in a frank, forthright talk and present the Japanese position in clear and understandable English terms. I have often speculated what a wonderful world this would be if humanity could communicate in one tongue.
While General Shepard and all of us in the Advisory Group were eager to organize an effective Japanese headquarters and staff for the NPR as rapidly as possible, we nevertheless were more acutely concerned with building a military force in being. With our Army engaged in a death struggle on the Korean Peninsula, the payoff in Japan had to be a viable force that could march and fight. An effective combat battalion of Japanese infantrymen in the field was much more important to the United States and Japan at the moment than a Japanese General Staff in Tōkyō. If the NPR had to fight, our American Advisory Group could in such an eventuality provide command and battle direction. Accordingly, while the new Japanese leaders in NPR Headquarters and the General Group fumbled with strange tables of organization and equipment and tried to grasp the meaning of unfamiliar military terms and training requirements, Colonel Albergotti, our operations officer, whipped out a thirteen-week training program, and the Japanese GIs were marching and shooting as soon as we could cut our Marine shoes down to fit them and get carbines in their hands. The major credit for converting Japanese civilians into paramilitary troopers must be given to the American majors and lieutenant colonels and their sergeant assistants who organized and commanded the Japanese forces in the field. Initiative, ingenuity, and action characterized these wonderful American heroes.
The raw material with which the Americans had to work, that is, the volunteers who joined the NPR in those early days, were well above the average for inductees. To begin with, almost 400,000 young people volunteered for the force, of whom 75,000 were accepted for induction. Over half of those inducted had served in the Imperial Army and Navy. Many of the inductees had been noncommissioned officers, a large percentage combat veterans. Their average age was about twenty-six years. As soon as we dressed them in uniforms, they strongly reminded me of the prewar Japanese army, except we knew their standard of education was much higher. They were generally physically fit, keen of spirit, and eager to make a success in the new organization.
Our immediate problem at the unit level was to select leaders so that we could move and control the unorganized mass. Unable to communicate except through interpreters, our American camp commanders faced a Herculean task. I don’t know how they and their Japanese colleagues accomplished the miracle of initial organization. Somehow leaders were found to command squads, platoons, and companies. Four companies were combined into battalions, and overall the American commander ran his troops like a private army. That the companies and the battalions developed in accordance with a common training program and on a prescribed schedule is owing in a great measure to the high level of development and dedication to duty of our officer and noncommissioned officer corps.
While our majors and lieutenant colonels struggled valiantly with their troops at the camps, the Advisory Group in Tōkyō undertook the equally difficult task of selecting and training leaders and instructors for the entire force. Having been stationed as military government chief in the Hiroshima area, I remembered the outstanding school and weapons training facilities our Eighth Army operated on the island of Eta Jima. With General Shepard’s approval, I made a hurried visit to my classmate, Colonel Sauer, who commanded the installation. My visit was most timely, as the Eighth Army, under heavy demand for men in Korea, was preparing to close out their operations on the island. It was indeed a master stroke of good luck, and equally important, there was an understanding at Eighth Army Headquarters that the American training facilities and the instructors would be made available for a limited time—enough time to train urgently needed weapons instructors and a few small-unit leaders. Without Eta Jima, it is doubtful that the NPR could have been anything more than an assembly of inadequate police recruits.
A total of 320 potential leaders and instructors, selected from camps all over Japan, attended our first intensive four-week course at the American school. We concentrated on infantry weapons instruction and small-unit leadership. Some technical men were given instruction in demolitions, combat engineering, and communications. Our first class was a vital training cadre that was to have an invigorating impact on the entire force. Distributed like treasured seeds throughout Japan, they became the key instructors and leaders in the NPR camps.
Forty of the first class of Eta Jima, carefully selected by our advisers there and by representatives of the National Rural Police, were ordered into our headquarters in Tōkyō, where they attended a four-week command and staff course conducted by Colonel Albergotti and his officers. Thirty-nine of them completed the course and were commissioned captains. They became our first leaders in the field, thirty-one being immediately assigned to command battalions while the remaining eight were allocated staff duty.
At the same time, Lieutenant Colonel Freyereisen, our comptroller; Colonel Thoulton, our personnel adviser; and Lieutenant Colonel Weetman, our logistics adviser, organized and conducted schools for finance, personnel, and procurement officers. Two months after the first volunteers donned NPR uniforms, several hundred eager young Japanese were enthusiastically assisting American advisers to build a new, enlightened democratic army in Japan. Of course, it was impossible in a few short weeks to develop military commanders and technicians, but we did instill in these high-quality, intelligent Japanese a keen awareness and appreciation of American instructional methods and theory of leadership and a working acquaintance with our infantry weapons and some of our engineering equipment.
Nevertheless, it was obvious to all, American and Japanese alike, that the higher-level leadership needed to command and staff the force could not be found among those who were volunteering as privates for the NPR. Since the decision had been made not to use former officers of the Imperial forces, this leadership had to be recruited from government agencies, from police establishments, and from business executives, professionals, and technicians.
One of the first requests that the director general made upon taking office was to ask for authority to commission by direct appointment initially two hundred, then an additional eight hundred, in the age group of thirty-one to forty, to be offered direct positions in the lower and intermediate ranks. As the GHQ staff, particularly Generals Willoughby and Whitney, was responsible for the clearing of all NPR leaders, the requests bounced around in the Japanese cabinet and American headquarters for more than a month. At one point, when Ministry of Justice General Ōhashi suggested that there were a large number of former Japanese officers who had served in the army of Manchukuo available for these posts (officers in the Manchukuo army had not been purged), the G-2 section of SCAP reopened the whole question of purgees. The matter degenerated into an acrimonious debate between General Willoughby and Mr. Ōhashi regarding the numbers actually available. Eventually, after intervention by the Japanese at the highest political level, the NPR was authorized to induct one thousand civilian executives, professionals, and technicians by offering direct appointments to the force.
The actions necessary to query, interview, and induce one thousand successful individuals who were established in their own businesses, professions, and services to give up their careers and join the NPR consumed many months. In the meantime, the organization, training, and development of a force of 75,000 proceeded under American advisers through the young Japanese officers and noncommissioned officers who were evolving from the ranks in the NPR. As time elapsed, with no severe protests being raised in the United States, among our allies, or even from the communist camp, we cautiously supplied the NPR initially with American carbines, then M-1 rifles and .30-caliber machine guns. As the international and local calm continued, we grew bold, issuing .50-caliber machine guns, 60-mm mortars, and eventually 81-mm mortars, ordnance repair shops, combat engineer equipment, and signal communications. While the creeping rearmament proceeded, th
e prime minister denied that Japan was doing so, steadfastly maintaining that the NPR was a police force, and we pressed our abundant weapons into the hands of the troopers as rapidly as they learned to use them.
By September 1951, one year after our hectic effort to deploy ten thousand NPR recruits on Hokkaidō to block a rumored communist invasion from Sakhalin, the new organization was beginning to assume some of the qualities of a military force. Based in thirty-seven camps throughout Japan, it was loosely grouped into four infantry-type divisions.
Although the force by this time had undergone nothing more advanced than battalion field exercises, the officers and troops had been given extensive individual and small-unit training. Practically everyone in the battalions had actually fired carbines, M-1 rifles, machine guns, bazookas, and mortars. As individual soldiers and members of small units, the NPR men could have given a credible account of themselves. As battalions of infantry, the NPR could, in the closing months of 1951, have put on a whale of a fight. Beyond that, the capability of the force for war was very limited, although in the opinion of many the organization possessed a great potential for future development.
In November 1951, I was privileged to read a formal report and evaluation of the NPR made by Lieutenant Colonel J. G. Figgess, assistant military adviser of the British Embassy in Tōkyō. In a six-page report, summarizing an extensive visit to the NPR in the fields, he noted, “But perhaps the most outstanding feature of the NPR units is the tremendous enthusiasm of all ranks and their evident keenness to make the most of their training. The junior officers (Lieutenants and Captains) and some of the NCOs were particularly impressive. They had joined the NPR as private soldiers and had risen to their present rank through merit and qualities of leadership.” Colonel Figgess concluded his report,
An Inoffensive Rearmament Page 15
