Judging from the standards of the units visited, the National Police Reserve has made great strides since its formation fourteen months ago and the progress has been particularly rapid during the past six months. Although the value of the force for war is not yet very high, the basic organization and training is sound and in view of the enthusiasm of all the ranks for the task in hand I consider that in another six months the infantry elements of the NPR will have reached a standard which would be acceptable in the modern British or American Army. It will be much later than this of course before the NPR is ready to be committed as a composite, self-supporting force since the technical and specialist training of the artillery, engineer and service elements has hardly begun and no field guns and other specialist equipment has yet been issued or even authorized for issue.
At this stage in the development of the NPR, noisy criticism erupted in the press, especially from former Imperial officers, attacking the quality of the leadership of the force. Most of the former military officers were pressing for immediate liquidation of the NPR as a totally inadequate organization. These individuals deplored the imposition of American concepts upon Japanese troops, urging a fresh start in which obviously they would play creative and controlling roles. Aside from those arguing their special interests, there were many Americans and Japanese who sincerely questioned the wisdom of organizing a military force with former police officers and civilian executives when there were so many highly qualified former Imperial officers available for the task. This argument, of course, could not be lightly dismissed, yet there were sound reasons against wholesale embracing of purgees in the NPR.
In visits to units at the camps, we were tremendously impressed with the effectiveness of the leadership at the company and battalion level. Our advisers with the units had uniformly high regard for their Japanese counterparts and especially the young captains and lieutenants serving in the companies. Moreover, I had learned long ago as a regular army professional to stop sneering at the civilian officers. In World War II, I rapidly discovered that a person who was a successful leader in civilian life usually possessed the intelligence and adaptability to develop into a good military commander or staff officer. Accordingly, many of us in the Advisory Group were convinced that the Japanese civilian leaders, who in most instances had to be urged to join the NPR, possessed fine leadership potential. All they needed to be effective soldiers was experience in commanding troops and carefully planned military schooling.
Most significant, from the American view, the civilian leaders brought to the NPR a freshness, enthusiasm, and flexibility that was indispensable in our effort to fashion a new democratic army in Japan. Recognizing their military limitations, they were eager for knowledge. They had nothing to unlearn and so they jumped to the task of learning with gusto. Highly intelligent and adaptable, they rapidly acquired considerable basic military knowledge and skills from their American advisers. It was amazing how much and how quickly they learned the elements of organization, administration, and logistics. They studied our technical and tactical manuals with a devotion. They loved soldiering, demonstrating a keen interest in weapons and commanding troops.
It was my firm conviction at the time that with intelligent assistance from our American advisers, the Japanese leadership in the NPR, from General Hayashi to the lowest-ranking lieutenant, could build an effective military force. We could probably develop an army more rapidly with former Imperial forces, but in the fall of 1951, I failed to see any violent emergency facing Japan that would necessitate any urgent buildup or expansion of its military forces.
Many argued, with merit, that there was no one in the NPR qualified to command a division or even a regiment in combat. But to be realistic, almost seven years had elapsed since any Japanese officer had commanded a division or regiment in combat. It was doubtful that former Imperial generals, now advancing in age, would be effective in commanding an American-type division organized with strange weapons, vehicles, and equipment. Even the younger Imperial colonels would have to undergo months of reorientation and re-education on new concepts dictated by modern military weapons and equipment. Moreover, it was a fact of life that even with the best military leaders in the world, it would be a year or a year and a half before the NPR would be ready to fight in division strength. Aside from the lack of qualified officers, the force had no artillery, tanks, or other heavy weapons necessary for a combat division. Nor did it possess the signal equipment, transportation, or logistical capability to be employed in divisional units. Even after the heavy weapons and other necessary equipment were issued and the troops trained in their use, months would be required to shake down units and exercise them in division maneuvers. One does not build an army for a nation overnight.
Yet the logic of rearmament could not disregard the former military officers of Japan. As the NPR assumed its potential military character and we celebrated the supply of increasingly heavier weapons and equipment, the Japanese cautiously opened the question of using former military officers in the force. Mr. Masuhara pointed out to General Shepard that some of the younger Imperial officers had recently been depurged and that there were hints that older officers would be removed from the purge lists shortly. Newspapers began to explore the possibilities involved, and American advisers were queried on their views. In February 1951, authority was cleared to induct these individuals, and subsequently we learned that Prime Minister Yoshida and General Ridgway, the new SCAP, were meeting to consider the desirability of depurging former colonels and lieutenant colonels with a view to bringing them into the NPR.
Although there was no serious objection raised to the induction of the younger former officers, the proposal to incorporate senior Imperial officers was greeted less than enthusiastically by some of our advisers and many Japanese. These officers, of course, posed a natural threat to those already in the NPR, but many sincere Japanese resisted their inclusion in the force on principle. Six years of national indoctrination by the occupation did not serve to endear former military leaders in the hearts of the people. I noted that the civilians in NPR Headquarters appeared especially hostile. Several months elapsed while feet dragged. When General Izeki, deputy chief of the General Group, one day requested that I extend the time for submission of certain information on these senior candidates for the NPR, I asked him bluntly what was delaying the decision. He assured me that neither General Hayashi nor himself had any objection, but he said that the young civilian bureaucrats in the director general’s office strongly opposed bringing senior Imperial officers into the NPR. Mr. Masuhara, he said, was being pulled in all directions, but he thought a compromise could somehow be arranged. Eventually 243 graduates of the Imperial Army and Navy academies, the younger men initially considered, were enrolled in the first officer training course for depurgees in the latter part of August 1951. In October, 812 former Imperial captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels were brought into the NPR and ordered to attend a two-month reorientation course. The door was now open for the former military personnel to resume their interrupted careers.
The long-debated issue of whether to use former Imperial officers was thus not a matter of principle or even need but a question of timeliness. Nothing that General Willoughby or the G-2 Section could do in 1950 had any impact on the decision to keep these officers out of the NPR at that time. American policy, General MacArthur’s directives, Allied attitudes, world opinion, and the Japanese public had grown to accept a military establishment for Japan, and it no longer mattered who served in the force. The Imperial officers who only a short time before had been viewed with suspicion and concern now joined the new army without any fuss or opposition and proceeded with their training as though they had always been a part of the NPR.
Time has the same effect on human attitudes, human behavior, and historical acceptance that it has on any process of erosion. One can chop rocks and stones with an axe until sparks fly and the brain is jarred, but all one can accomplish is to dull the axe. Yet water f
lowing into the sea in time has gouged out the great canyons of the Colorado. The War of Roses lasted a generation, but how many today know where it was fought? The Christians during the Crusades, bent on seeking the Holy Grail, hated the Saracens so vilely that it is reported they actually ate their enemy in battle, but that long-forgotten hate has turned to compassion and loans to our Arab brothers. And so, as the slaughter in the Holy War against communism escalates, humanity knows that both sides will eventually settle their differences at the conference table, unless time dictates destruction for both.
The circumstance that caused a hiatus in the use of Imperial officers in Japan’s military establishment permitted the fashioning of a democratically inclined modern force. The initial leaders of the NPR, inexperienced in military matters, friendly to American leadership, and unhampered by preconceived ideas or ordeals, laid the foundation in the organization for a permissive climate that could not have come about in a force dominated from its inception by former officers of the Imperial military establishment. Brutality as a symbol of toughness, so vital a part of the old army, could not re-establish itself among officers who abhorred its practice; instead there developed in the NPR a new spirit dedicated to the dignity of the individual soldier. When the purgees did join the force, they were inducted in relatively small numbers into an organization that was dominated by American military concepts and that had accepted these concepts as superior to those of the old army. They joined a “going concern” in which they had to move cautiously, picking their uncertain way in an environment not altogether familiar. They were not the “top dogs.” They had been in prewar Japan, or they might have been as the creators of the NPR. If they wanted to move up in this new organization, they would have to demonstrate not only military skills and knowledge but tolerance and acceptance. On the other hand, they possessed much they could give the new force: military competence, strength of character, devotion to country, and hopefully a deep understanding of past mistakes.
In December 1951, Lieutenant Colonel Figgess of the British Embassy, after a visit to three NPR installations, had a revealing comment to make in his written report on the newly integrated former Imperial majors and lieutenant colonels he had observed at a field-firing exercise of a company in an attack. He wrote,
However, the especial factor of interest was the reaction of the former Japanese Army officers to the training exercises and demonstrations. At first they were silent and appeared to be somewhat shy of expressing any opinion and two individuals who I engaged in conversation separately told me that despite their two months staff course at Kurihama, they had been unprepared to find the NPR in such an advanced state of military readiness. Later on, as they shed their reserve, it was clear that they were taking a keen interest in everything that they saw but my impression was that, as a whole, they were surprisingly ignorant of modern infantry tactics and methods of training, and that was as far as these matters were concerned, any of the junior officers of the NPR who had been in the force for just over a year would probably be more competent than these former professional officers. (Most of our advisers subscribed to this observation.) For example, it was clear from the questions asked and the comments offered that the officers, as a body, were unfamiliar with the principle of fire and movement and one of the group told me that this system was not practiced in the old Japanese Army because the lavish expenditure of ammunition which it involved would never have been permitted.
Interestingly, Lieutenant Colonel Figgess speculated,
Although their training at the moment is of high order, and the progress made during the past six or eight months is certainly remarkable, the Japanese if left to themselves at this juncture would, I think, tend to slip from the straight and narrow path laid down by the Americans and indulge in training schedules of their own conception. Some of this no doubt would be harmless though time-consuming junketing such as fancy marching, honour guards and ceremonial drill but some might tend to take on the flavor of less agreeable features of the old Japanese Army.
This was a warm compliment to American capabilities and achievements from a sincere soldier. Yet as I read his thought-provoking report, I wondered whether we were repeating in Japan what we had so sadly produced in South Korea—a great paper army with officers highly articulate in military jargon and soldiers suffering from the dry rot of a sterile nothingness in their souls.
I recalled the early days of July 1950 when a small band of bitter American officers watched the South Korean army they had so diligently trained fall apart and flee in terror before the invaders from the North. This was the army that had been lauded in the American press as the best army in Asia. Its officers were schooled in what Brigadier General William L. Roberts, chief of the Advisory Group Korea, had called his “Little West Point.” Many of these officers had undergone advanced training in Korean versions of our own infantry school at Leavenworth, Kansas. But there was something very vital missing in the South Korean army. Nor did the communists outnumber our ally, for South Korea, with 25 million people, enjoyed a population two and a half times that of North Korea.
What had occurred was that our South Korean officers and men had learned the synthesis of soldiering. They could recite their classroom lessons well. They talked a good game of war. Everyone worked, practiced, and maneuvered like soldiers, but when the chips were down, they ran like cattle in a stampede.
In the early phase of the Korean invasion, companies, battalions, and regiments retreated in full flight without permission, without orders, and in many instances without making contact with the enemy. They were scattered like chaff before the wind by the same kind of Koreans as they were, except the invaders lived north of the 38th parallel. One must ponder, why did the South Koreans run and why did the “communist gooks” from the north fight?
As I watched our NPR battalions run through their field exercises with their usual excellence, I always reserved a hope that our methods had not spoiled the traditional fighting qualities of the Japanese soldier. At such moments, I always sensed that there was something resilient and tough in the guts of the Japanese. One thing is certain, outer military trappings, those often-lauded characteristics—neat uniforms, shined shoes, sharp commands, articulate officers, and even modern weapons do not make a fighting army.1
CHAPTER TEN
SEISHIN KYŌIKU
Napoleon liked to say, “An Army traveled on its stomach,” but he also knew that an army fights with its heart. More than any soldier, the Japanese Imperial heitai had seishin kyōiku, or “military spirit.” Spirit, heart, guts, or seishin kyōiku, whatever one calls it, is the essence of a fighting force. Without it, no soldier is worth his salt and no army worth its budget.
When Mr. Masuhara became director general of the NPR, he established his family in Tōkyō, a few houses down the street from my quarters. This gave us both an opportunity to become acquainted socially, and although at that time he spoke very little English and my Japanese was limited to enthusiastic “ah-so’s,” we found that a scotch or two did wonders for communication and understanding.
About nine months after the establishment of the NPR, I found Mr. Masuhara talking more and more about the spirit of the soldiers. He seemed agitated whenever he brought up the subject, and he would go on, beyond my capability to understand, telling me what seishin kyōiku meant when he was a lieutenant in the Japanese Imperial Army.
I never got the full significance of the message he was trying to convey to me until one day I read an inspection report sent to me by the chief of the General Group, General Hayashi. Part of the report was in English and apparently prepared personally by the general for my information. In it, he went into some detail describing a parade and review that was held in his honor. Obviously disappointed, General Hayashi concluded, “I was very discouraged. As the men marched in review, I saw no spirit in their eyes.”
The strange comment—“no spirit in their eyes”—produced mixed thoughts and emotions within me. “No spirit in their
eyes.” At first I smiled to myself at the unaccustomed combination of words, but I knew that General Hayashi was a very serious, sincere man, and if he took the trouble to write me that his men did not show spirit in their eyes, something was “bugging” him, and I was determined to find out what.
A few days later, I paid a visit to General Hayashi. As we sat around his low table sipping tea in his office, I asked him what he meant when he reported that the soldiers of the NPR did not have spirit in their eyes. He smiled in his sincere manner, then, talking to his interpreter, he answered with a faraway look in his eyes. “You have often told me, Colonel, that you admired the Japanese soldier in the last war for his will to fight and his readiness to die. In the Imperial Japanese Army, the most important training that a soldier received was spiritual training. We called it ‘seishin kyōiku.’ It was a kind of warrior religion of the army. The yobitai has no seishin kyōiku. I have looked into the eyes of my men but it is not there. All Japan is worried because the yobitai has no spirit. Our people ask, ‘How can the NPR fight with no seishin kyōiku? Who will the yobitai fight for? Who is the supreme commander?’”
“To the Japanese,” continued General Hayashi, “these are serious questions. I am full of deep concern for our yobitai. I have tried to find a satisfactory substitute to take the place of the spirit of the Imperial Army, but there is nothing in Japan that can substitute for seishin kyōiku. There is a great void in our hearts. Before the war, the emperor was our supreme commander. Who is our supreme commander now? The soldier of the Japanese Imperial Army was ready and eager to die for his emperor. But now, Colonel, tell me, do I ask my yobitai to die for a politician? How can I ask them to die for Yoshida or Ōhashi?”
How does one bridge the centuries of thinking and communicate from one mind to another what one means by fighting and dying for one’s country, our way of life, our democracy, and that we fought and many died so these things would endure. I explained that we had no emperor to inspire patriotism, but we were patriotic nonetheless. Our Army was not only a great technological war machine; it was composed of ordinary men and women, who sacrificed, suffered, and died, whose blood flowed just as red and courageously as did the blood of the kamikaze and the dedicated soldiers of the tennō, son of heaven.
An Inoffensive Rearmament Page 16
