by James Webb
“Captain Marsh,” began Willoughby, holding up a thick, meaty hand. “The Japanese diet is meeting tomorrow. They’ve labeled it an emergency session. The emperor is going to speak. We’ve been invited, but the supreme commander isn’t making his formal entrance to Tokyo for another five days. I don’t think it’s a good idea for any of our senior people to precede him into the city, even for an afternoon.”
“An excellent point,” interjected MacArthur, “on which I absolutely agree. There must be a ceremonial majesty, a feeling of absolute change, when I move into the city.”
“But it would be very helpful to our preparations if we have an unvarnished report on the proceedings,” continued Willoughby. “From someone who carries no—weight, in the official sense. We would not want the Japanese to consider his presence as prima facie the supreme commander’s. It would give them too much face too early, as if we were condoning whatever it is that will be said. But it would be good to have someone there who understands the culture and the language and can be trusted to report to us with some insight on what they are saying.”
“Jay, you’re well suited for that task,” agreed Whitney, no doubt repeating an earlier recommendation he had made to MacArthur. “You had some damn good insights after the ride in from the airport with the emperor’s adviser, that—”
“Kido,” I said. “Marquis Kido. The lord privy seal.”
“Exactly,” said Whitney, looking at MacArthur as if to verify their earlier discussion. “In fact, when we floated your name to the Japanese, Kido jumped on it. I think he believes he can use you.”
“Use me, sir?”
“To communicate unofficially to me,” announced MacArthur. “An excellent diplomatic device if done properly, by the way.”
“Yes, sir.” As I watched MacArthur’s doting nod I was remembering Tomoyuki Yamashita’s comments of the day before. And I suddenly realized that I had gained a new and enormous power that transcended both my age and rank. I had become a trusted listener.
“We’ll need a full report,” continued Willoughby, his piercing eyes peeling me back like an onion. “What is the emperor’s mood? How about the rest of the parliament? What are they thinking? What do we need to be thinking?”
Whitney gave me a small smile. “Let him think he’s using you, Jay. Are you up to it?”
“I’m flattered, sir.”
“No notes,” said Willoughby.
“Sir?”
“Don’t take notes. It weakens our position if someone from our staff seems so concerned that he’s transcribing the proceedings.”
“Attend, Captain,” smiled MacArthur, having regained a lighter mood. “Show your face. Nod and smile. Express good wishes to those who greet you, on behalf of the supreme commander. Above all, make no political statements and give no judgments on my behalf.”
“Can you play the game?” asked General Whitney.
“The game, sir?”
“Listen,” said Willoughby, confirming my earlier intuition. “There is no substitute for human intelligence. Watch what is going on, and listen to what they want you to communicate back to us. That’s it. And then report to us on what you’ve heard.”
“Like a duck, sir.”
“What?”
I smiled gamely. “You look at a duck on a pond and he’s calm and serene, floating along on top of the water. But if you check underneath the waterline, he’s paddling like hell.”
Whitney laughed indulgently. “OK, Jay. Like a duck.”
As I walked out of the hotel room MacArthur called to me one last time. “Jay!”
I stopped, turning toward him. “Yes, sir?”
“Did you see your young lady in Manila?”
My heart sank a little, thinking of the opportunity I had missed. “No, sir. There wasn’t any time, sir.”
MacArthur smiled indulgently. I could not tell whether it was from satisfaction or empathy, but I could sense that he felt even closer to me.
“That’s the price one pays when he assumes a larger role in the tapestry of world affairs, you know. Another lesson. Because there always is a price, Jay.”
CHAPTER 9
I know what it might have been like to drive a chariot through the just-plowed and salted soil of defeated Carthage, or to make an accidental turn at the edge of a jungle and end up alone in the ruins of what once had been a thriving ancient culture. Except for the thousands of silent, ragged Japanese who stopped momentarily to stare at my passing as they pulled their homes back out of the dust and rubble, I could have been in either place as my jeep made its way from Yokohama to Tokyo. And driving through this wasteland I became overwhelmed with emotion. Merely to see Tokyo had been one of my greatest dreams before the war. Passing through its devastation on my way to be Douglas MacArthur’s untitled emissary at an emergency meeting of the Japanese diet seemed like an odd and twisted fantasy.
We were early. I asked my driver to make a loop past the Imperial Palace grounds before I went to the diet. Approaching the center of the city we reached the district of Chiyoda, and the rubble suddenly abated. As we moved closer still to the center of the city, it stopped altogether. Rickshaws appeared on tranquil streets. Now and then a bus passed. Here and there I could even make out a charcoal-burner car. Lord Privy Seal Kido had not brought all the charcoal-burners to Yokohama, after all. More importantly, it was clear that our bombers had been careful here.
Suddenly the Imperial Palace grounds revealed themselves, high and remote across a series of moats and bridges. Within a few miles, hundreds of thousands of people had been killed by the firebombs that had begun in March. Across the country, more than two million homes had been destroyed. But as we drove past the emperor’s home, I saw that not even a brick on the palace moat was charred.
The grounds covered a vast, roughly circular area about a mile across. There was no grand palace in the European sense but rather a series of low buildings and sprawling gardens mixed among thick stands of bamboo and lines of tall, old hardwood trees. Stone watchtowers loomed above the far side of the moat, at the edges of the grounds, their curving roofs speaking of an ancient past.
Here on this veritable island in the middle of the city the emperor lived, untouched by the bombings that had so completely devastated his loyal people. Hidden beyond the towers and the walls were an inner palace, an outer, ceremonial palace, a chamberlain’s abode, a concubines’ pavilion, a villa for the crown prince, a library and biological research lab where the emperor liked to putter, and a large barracks complex for the Imperial Guards. Among the villas, just adjacent to the Fukiage Gardens, was a pond where the emperor was fond of taking his afternoon walks. Near the pond stood a special palace shrine where he prayed daily to his ancestors.
A few minutes later I reached my destination. The national diet building was less than half a mile from the palace grounds, at their southern edge, where the Akasaka district began. In addition to the national diet, Akasaka was the home of the most important government ministries, as well as the prime minister’s office and the national theater. It was Tokyo’s version of what Washington, D.C., calls Capitol Hill.
I felt a small triumph as I jumped out of the jeep and headed for the diet building. I had beaten MacArthur to Tokyo!
Other than four journalists who did not speak Japanese, I was the only American who entered the diet building for this special session. More than thirty correspondents mulled suspiciously outside, having declined to enter when asked to check their weapons at the door. I laughed quietly to myself, listening to their suspicions. What did they think the Japanese would do, round them up and send them to a prisoner of war camp? They had violated MacArthur’s cardinal precept: in the Orient, the man who shows no fear is king.
I walked alone into the building, entering the assembly floor area and proceeding to a control desk, where I gave a nervously smiling clerk my name. When I wrote my name into the guest book the old man’s face suddenly lit up, recognizing it immediately. He spoke to me without h
esitation in Japanese.
“Marsh-San, you will please wait here,” he said, rising quickly from his chair. “Only for one moment.”
Before I could answer he hurried off to an office down a shadowed corridor. And within a minute he returned, jogging just ahead of the beaming, electric-eyed Marquis Koichi Kido. The lord privy seal was dressed in an elegant grey wool suit. He gave me a covetous look, as if he had chosen wisely on that recent afternoon when we had met next to the bomb-pocked runway of Atsugi. Reaching me he bowed slightly.
“Captain Marsh! Foreign Minister Shigemitsu told us you would be coming. We are so pleased that the supreme commander has sent you as his representative.”
And I knew The Game had begun.
For MacArthur it had begun yesterday, when Shigemitsu had paid him a cranky, contentious visit at the hotel in Yokohama. The supreme commander had hinted that he was going to give women the vote, and was intent on rewriting the Japanese Constitution. He had also announced that he would be happy to allow the Japanese to disarm their own soldiers and even to make the actual arrests of those charged with war crimes if they so desired. Then he had added, with an obliqueness that would have made a mandarin proud, that so long as they performed such duties properly he would continue to bring in food to feed the near-starving population.
In truth, MacArthur had always believed that disarmament would take place successfully only if the Japanese authorities performed the task. And he had already sent a secret, desperate message to Washington: Send me food or send me bullets. But MacArthur and the Japanese both were madly posturing, as if they were now chained together in the same cage, dependent on each other for survival while at the same time probing one another with falsely polite diplomatic sticks.
The emperor’s welcoming gesture to MacArthur at Atsugi had been: preserve my dignity and I will continue to cooperate. MacArthur’s subtle message to the foreign minister, part of a series of emerging threats, was: continue to cooperate or your people will blame you when they starve. To a point, they both were right. Beyond that, both were bluffing. Both sides knew this, but neither knew the precise edge where the other side’s reality ended and its bluffing had begun.
I returned Kido’s bow. “Lord Privy Seal, I am honored to be with you. As you know, the supreme commander is very busy. But even though we are not a part of these proceedings, he believes that such an important occasion as today should not be ignored by our office.”
“Of course!” answered Kido. As he spoke, Kido’s hands and head seemed to be in constant movement. Behind the thick, wire-framed glasses his eyes glanced in all directions, as if helping to expend the energy he kept so tightly bound inside. “Then you must come and sit with me.”
I had known he would invite me, but it was necessary first to decline. “Thank you for your kindness, Lord Privy Seal, but I will be fine in the visitor’s gallery.”
“Oh, no!” he protested. “You will be my guest. And I can help you understand our proceedings.”
“I understand your language quite well,” I replied.
“Oh, I know that,” said Kido. “And I do not wish to insult your obvious expertise. But it is not the language. It is the proceedings.”
Having not appeared too eager, it was now proper to agree. “All right, then. I am very thankful for your courtesies, and I would be happy to sit with you.”
“It is for the best,” Kido said, his eyebrows arched and his face giving off a conspiratorial smile. “You must know that in our culture, and particularly among politicians, words can hold different meanings. Even very specific words. So I would like to be with you when they are being spoken.”
“Now I truly understand,” I said, beginning to follow the lord privy seal to a separate sitting area near the floor.
Kido was warning me that there would be much “belly talking” going on that morning. Words would be uttered, some filled with false bravado, that might have an entirely different intent than their literal interpretation. It would take an expert observer to sort out posturing from reality. The lord privy seal wished to guide me through these interpretations. I did not fully trust him, but Kido and perhaps the emperor himself wanted to blunt the impact of the posturings before the supreme commander decided to act on them.
“Have you ever read the writings of Goethe?” I asked him as we neared our seats.
“Goethe? The German philosopher. Of course.” Kido grinned ironically, gesturing for me to sit down. “As you know, we had a certain relationship with the Germans for some time. It became my duty to read Goethe.”
“Goethe was quite perceptive,” I said.
“Ah, yes. A brilliant man.”
“He once wrote, ‘whenever one is polite in German, one lies.’ ”
For a second, a stunned look accompanied Kido’s normal wide-eyed expression, as if I were rebuking him. And then he began laughing. “That is very good, Captain Jay Marsh. Goethe, from your own memory. You are young, but you are obviously a well-schooled man. Now I understand why you are so valuable to General MacArthur.”
“Oh, I am nothing to MacArthur,” I protested. And I saw from Kido’s seemingly knowing smile that with every denial my closeness to MacArthur became greatly exaggerated in his eyes. To Kido, my simple statement was itself a form of belly talk, false modesty to accentuate my very importance.
The members of the diet began somberly filing in, walking toward their assigned places on the floor. Many of these elders, clansmen, and members of the imperial family were clad in traditional kimonos. Others wore military uniforms. A few were dressed in Western suits. This was the aristocracy of Japan, still reeking with humiliation from the surrender of two days before. All but a few were unspeaking. They stared numbly toward the front of the room at the rostrum where the emperor would soon appear. The rostrum was decorated on its front with a large chrysanthemum that symbolized the imperial family. Those who did speak held their voices to a whisper, giving the room a breathless, anticipatory sibilance.
Kido leaned over and touched my shoulder, an act of camaraderie, whispering also. “We are very pleased with MacArthur’s understanding of our situation,” he said. “His speech during the ceremonies to end the war was inspiring to all of us. The emperor ordered that the speech be printed in its full entirety in every newspaper in the country. MacArthur is becoming very popular in Japan! Our people love him!”
Kido raised a finger in the air, testing my reaction as he quoted from MacArthur’s speech. “Justice! Tolerance! We must reach to a higher dignity. Many bad things happen in war. We cannot live in the past.”
“It was a great speech,” I finally managed to mumble, trying very hard to obey Court Whitney’s instructions. “And I am happy to be with you today, Lord Privy Seal. I have always admired the Japanese culture.”
“Then you know that this is not an easy moment for the Japanese people,” continued Kido. “We have been preparing them for some time.”
“How have you been preparing them?” I asked.
“You must understand the nature of suffering,” answered Kido. He hesitated for a moment, as if he were going too far. “We did agree that we could speak openly, did we not?”
“Absolutely, Lord Privy Seal.”
“Yes,” said Kido. “We are more alike than others might think. The elites of our governments, I mean. We are more cosmopolitan. We have read Goethe and Tolstoy. We have seen the world. But our native cultures? Not so similar! For instance, what do you think about the bombing of Tokyo? Not the areas that were destroyed, but the areas that were not destroyed?”
“It was a conscious decision of our government that we would not destroy Japanese national treasures,” I answered, for despite the carnage and obliteration it had been a firm policy. “Just as we did not bomb the ancient capital of Kyoto.”
“Exactly!” Kido was animated in his excitement. “You see, your royalty and ours understand that no matter how ferociously a war is fought, in the end the royalty must respect each other. If we do n
ot, there is no civilization.”
“We have no royalty in America, Lord Privy Seal.”
“Now you’re playing with semantics,” shrugged Kido. “But I am sure you and the supreme commander both get the point. And then I must ask you, what does an ordinary Japanese think when all the bombs come down for months at a time but none of them touch the emperor’s palace or the holy shrines?”
“I don’t know, Lord Privy Seal. What does he think?”
“He thinks nothing, Captain Jay Marsh. Nothing. Because he expects this to happen. Do you understand? He might die, and the entire population of commoners might be incinerated. But no harm can ever come to the emperor.”
Kido’s words amazed me. I had never thought of it, but in an odd way his logic was unassailable. Our decision not to bomb the Imperial Palace became, in the minds of many Japanese, either an act of magic or a divine intervention, as if the power of the emperor had been strong enough to deflect the bombs.
“So, we had to work with the people to prepare them for the end of the war. It could not come too early, or they would feel betrayed in their sacrifices. It could come only when they were secretly begging for it. They would have to feel not only that they had sacrificed but that they could sacrifice no more. And so the time came when their suffering was so great that the emperor, through his decision to accept personal shame even though he was not at risk, was relieving them of their own suffering. Deciding to end the war finally became an act of imperial benevolence. Do you agree, Captain Jay Marsh?”
Agree? I thought to myself. Kido’s logic was so powerful and profound, and yet so foreign to the way that Americans were taught to think and believe, that I was not even certain he was being serious.
