by James Webb
He tapped another box. “On August thirteenth, the emperor’s uncle, Prince Higashikuni, was appointed to the key position of chief of the Japanese air force. Appointed by—who? By Hirohito. On the very next day, the Japanese formally abandoned the international agreement they had signed, where they had pledged to avoid the deliberate killing of civilian noncombatants, and began bombing civilian targets in and around the crowded slums of Shanghai.”
Another box. “On August fifteenth, General Iwane Matsui, long known as a proponent of friendship with China, was called out of retirement by the emperor and given a cover assignment as commander in chief of the Japanese forces in central China. By the order of—who?”
MacArthur was working to repress his anger. He pointed at the cocky, irascible lawyer, knowing instinctively where Genius was heading and not liking it at all. “He was not given a cover assignment, Colonel, he was given a military command.”
“He was old, tubercular, and retired, General,” answered Colonel Genius. “I believe the most sympathetic statement that can be made is that they decided to let the old man have a go at it before they turned to other people and other means. I do not wish to exculpate the general from his own responsibility for war crimes, but when I am finished you might see the logic of what I am saying.”
“Then finish,” ordered MacArthur.
“Yes, sir,” answered Genius. “Finishing is exactly what I’m trying to do.” He slapped the pad with his pointer, causing the assistant to flip it over to a new page, then pointed to various boxes that surrounded a map of Shanghai as he spoke. “On August twenty-third—only eight days after he had been called out of retirement, hardly enough time to have developed a plan of his own—Matsui landed at Shanghai with thirty-five thousand fresh troops and immediately became bogged down. Part of the reason was that there were English, American, and French forces nearby, and he had to maneuver carefully because he did not want to end up fighting them. But the biggest reason was that he was not ruthless enough as he pushed through these populated areas, over here.”
“ ‘Ruthless’ is a subjective choice of words,” interrupted MacArthur. “There may have been other reasons he was not successful. What you are really speaking of is a question of fire and maneuver. And of judgment. A command failure. And a command failure is not in and of itself a failure of government politicians.”
“You are indeed correct on that last point, sir,” answered Colonel Genius, obviously wearying of the relentless attempts to sidetrack his presentation. “But it was a failure that frustrated these same government politicians immensely. In early September, Hirohito authorized a Grand Imperial Headquarters to be created inside the emperor’s palace, in order to monitor the day-to-day movements of the China campaign. In October he issued an imperial rescript explaining to the people that Japan would soon unleash its military power ‘to urge grave self-reflection upon China, and to establish peace in the East without delay.’ An imperial rescript, General MacArthur. ‘Grave self-reflection.’ What could those words mean? Think of that.”
MacArthur went silent. Genius nodded to his assistant. Another page flipped over. Turning to the easel, the colonel moved his pointer around the edges of a hand-drawn map showing the Yangtze River Delta, from Shanghai to Nanking. Heavy black arrows indicating troop movements dominated the map, all of them ending up around Nanking. “In early November the Japanese launched two massive amphibious operations, one to the north and one to the south of Shanghai, bypassing the city and pushing forward to Nanking. These were masterfully executed invasions that totally fooled the Chinese army, which itself had become bogged down in its resistance of the doddering old General Matsui. Quality troops. Shock troops, if you would. Slash-and-burn types, you know what I mean. Their landings were followed by a trail of deliberate pillage. It is estimated that the two elements of this pincers displaced eighteen million people, and took nearly four hundred thousand Chinese lives in the advance from Shanghai to Nanking.”
“Estimated by whom?” asked MacArthur stubbornly.
“By the Chinese, sir,” said Genius dryly. “I think they were in the best position to do the counting.”
“This part rather reminds me of the viciousness in Manila,” said MacArthur, altering his tactics. “And in Manila we are holding the military commander accountable. So where was General Matsui while his troops were committing these despicable acts?”
“Oh, we haven’t even gotten to the despicable acts, sir.” Genius’s soft brown eyes twinkled victoriously. “But the answer to your question is most interesting. General Matsui, as I said, was a sick old man, honored to have been called out of retirement to serve the emperor.”
The lawyer’s wooden pointer slapped the tablet at a place near Shanghai. “While his troops marched up the Yangtze, Matsui was lying in bed with a tubercular fever at his field headquarters in Süchow. He did have the opportunity to visit Nanking after it was conquered, and so he should be held culpable for not having stopped the rapes and the massacres. But he didn’t order them, and he wasn’t in charge of the actual grotesquery himself. Because on November twenty-seventh, the emperor relieved General Matsui of direct responsibility for combat operations, supposedly promoting him by giving him another title—command of the so-called central Chinese theater.”
Genius tweaked MacArthur yet again. “Rather similar in removed scope to your former Southwest Asian Command, sir.”
“Throughout the war I accepted full responsibility for the performance of my soldiers, Colonel. I always have. The record is clear on this point.”
“I’m sure it would do wonders for General Wainwright’s spirit if you informed him of that, sir.”
The supreme commander stopped pacing and fixed Genius with a prevolcanic stare. The feisty lawyer had stepped closer to insubordination than any military underling I had ever watched, save possibly Admiral “Bull” Halsey, who had actually won an argument with MacArthur two years before. But Genius had taken a very careful shot. MacArthur could not argue his abandonment and then his condemnation of Skinny Wainwright, who only days before had finally received the Congressional Medal of Honor that MacArthur himself had worked for years to deprive him of, without opening himself up to some seriously damaging replies. Nor could he follow his usual course of summarily relieving an unpleasant or unproductive officer of his duties. There was no doubt that Genius possessed both the intellect and the information to publicly embarrass MacArthur, thus feeding the anger among the media and the other allies regarding the supreme commander’s lack of enthusiasm for prosecuting political war crimes.
But in truth, the stare itself was enough. It froze Colonel Genius for a full five seconds. Finally the frumpy lawyer shrugged uncomfortably, giving off one of his disarming, helpless grins. “Sorry, sir. I withdraw the comment on the grounds of lack of relevance. Maybe even poor taste. Anyway, the truly important point here is that the emperor relieved Matsui of direct battlefield supervision. And the commander in chief of the army that now surrounded Nanking became—the emperor’s uncle, Prince Asaka. Appointed by—guess who?”
MacArthur resisted yet again. “But General Matsui remained the overall commander. We cannot lose sight of that, Colonel.”
Genius picked up a sheaf of papers and thumbed through them as he spoke. “This isn’t a question of General Matsui’s guilt, General, although his own culpability probably is more from negligence than criminal intent. By this time, sir, it’s pretty clear that General Matsui was out of it. It’s more about who actually ordered the activities. A higher level of guilt. That’s the focus. That’s what ‘Class A’ war crimes are all about. A higher level of guilt. And why, in this instance, must we look higher?”
Genius had found the paper he was looking for. He glanced up to MacArthur, then read from the paper. “Matsui did in fact issue an edict from his sickbed, ordering his troops to pull up outside the Nanking city walls and to enter the city only after careful negotiations. He said that the occupation of Nanking should be carr
ied out in a way that would—and I’m quoting here, sir—‘sparkle before the eyes of the Chinese and make them place confidence in Japan.’ He reminded them that by entering the Chinese capital they would be ‘attracting the attention of the world.’ Nanking was, after all, an international city. Large numbers of American, German, and British residents had remained behind as Chiang Kai-shek and his government evacuated to Hankow, 350 miles further upriver. Matsui ordered in writing that the occupation be—another quote here—‘absolutely free from plunder.’ ”
Genius flipped through the papers some more, finding another document. “Prince Asaka—the emperor’s uncle—had other ideas. As his troops closed around Nanking, he sent out his own orders, under his personal seal, marked ‘secret, to be destroyed.’ The orders were very simple. They said: ‘kill all captives.’ ”
The colonel’s pointer slammed the pad again. His assistant flipped it to another page. Now on the easel was a series of columns, with dates and then statistics broken down into categories.
“What happened after that,” said Genius, “is extremely well documented. The rape of Nanking began on December fourteenth. It continued unabated for six weeks, despite worldwide protest. It was systematic and deliberate. At least twenty thousand women were raped, some of them repeatedly until they died. More than two hundred thousand unarmed people were murdered. Not just killed but obscenely murdered, General. Shot for fun. Used for bayonet practice and for instructions on how to behead someone with a samurai sword. Buried neck-deep, alive, so that their heads could be kicked like soccer balls. Lined up in front of trenches and machine-gunned. It was so bad that a German diplomat, Mr. John Rosen, wrote a long, angry report to Hitler condemning the barbarism of the Japanese army. Imagine that! It even turned the Nazis’ stomachs! And it did not stop until Prince Konoye admitted to the emperor that it was having no effect on the Japanese government’s objectives of unseating Chiang Kai-shek.”
“I have always been told that it was an army run amok,” insisted MacArthur, adamantly steering the incident away from the imperial family. “A drunken orgy.”
“For six weeks?” asked Genius. “It would take a lot of booze for them to remain drunk that long. And it’s pretty hard to imagine one hundred thousand men killing two hundred thousand people through spontaneous disorderly conduct, is it not, sir?”
“They did it in Manila.”
“They may have, General. We’re looking into that. But in Manila the Japanese were surrounded. They knew it was all over, that they were all going to die, anyway. By contrast, it was a proud, conquering army in Nanking, sir. They’d just kicked Chiang Kai-shek up the river. Have you ever known of a case where a victorious Japanese army lost control of its soldiers for a full six weeks?”
MacArthur had finally had enough. “I’ve listened patiently, Colonel Genius. It’s nearly lunchtime. Make your point.”
“All right, sir. Lunch is waiting. Stomachs are growling. Proceeding at once to the point, here.” Genius slapped the pointer onto the chart. His assistant flipped it over to the last page. On it were a list of names. Now his pointer hit the names themselves.
“You’re not going to like this, sir, but it must be addressed.”
They were the very names that MacArthur dreaded most, the names that would put the rest of his occupation goals into an irreversible tailspin.
HIROHITO
KONOYE
HIGASHIKUNI
ASAKA
“Let’s deal with Matsui first,” said Genius, “since I know you’re going to ask me why his name isn’t up there. It’s not up there because it’s foregone that he should and will be charged. On December seventeenth, during the worst part of the carnage, he made a ceremonial entry into Nanking, riding a chestnut horse ahead of Prince Asaka’s entourage. At the center of the city he stopped and led the Japanese soldiers in a series of three grand ‘Banzais’ for the emperor. He returned to his headquarters in Shanghai that night, but he was in fact present at the scene. Perhaps they hid it all from him, or perhaps he saw it and knew that he was powerless to do anything about it. But as a military commander he knew or should have known. He had certain duties and did not exercise those duties.”
“Precisely,” agreed MacArthur. “The protection of the weak and the innocent are the most holy responsibilities of a battlefield commander.”
“I actually feel a little sorry for Matsui,” admitted Genius. “I can tell from reading his messages that he had no such intentions. He had always been a supporter of a Chinese-Japanese alliance. Can you imagine this sick, doddering man riding on his horse through the streets of Nanking with Prince Asaka right behind him, passing the mausoleum of his old friend Sun Yat-sen, who had actually founded the Chinese Republic, while Japanese soldiers raped and plundered the entire city?”
“I feel no such sympathy,” intoned MacArthur. “He should have honored his old friend’s memory and stopped the carnage.”
“Indeed he should have, sir. But this is what he was facing.” Genius slapped the tablet paper with his pointer again and again as he spoke. “The emperor, setting up an imperial military headquarters in his palace and issuing a damning imperial rescript. The longtime hereditary adviser to the throne, selected as prime minister just before the punitive invasion. One of the emperor’s uncles—the same man who would serve as prime minister when the war ended—picked to be chief of the air corps the day before the policy toward bombing innocent civilians changed. Another uncle selected to command the ground forces that took Nanking and razed it, riding on a horse right behind him.”
Genius stopped for a moment, letting his words sink in. Then he began again, as if providing the closing summary in a legal argument. “The question, sir, is not whether the rape of Nanking is a war crime that demands international justice. There is no doubt about that. Rather, the question, for you and for us, is whether the Japanese political process, at its highest level, should be held accountable for deliberately and consciously planning and conducting acts of mass terrorism and extermination. As an instrument of national policy. That, sir, is the question.”
The room became quiet. Genius wiped a sweating forehead with a white handkerchief, then shifted from foot to foot, waiting for a response. MacArthur looked at the lawyer with an unbending frown, as if he were processing the allegations and weighing them against an invisible standard. Finally he spoke.
“What you say is emotional, Colonel, and persuasive, so far as it goes. But it hardly scratches the surface of how the imperial government actually worked! Of course those three princes would be involved. It is a historical maxim that during a period of war the emperor would trust his closest associates with key positions. That we know. And the end result in Nanking we know. But that, really, is all we know. Did these proclamations and appointments in and of themselves translate into an obligatory savagery on the part of Japanese soldiers? Or was there something else at work here, something that we in our culture do not understand, that nonetheless sprang from events at the battlefield level? We don’t know.”
“We know a lot, sir,” said Genius quietly. “And in all due respect, I also know this: If you’re going to try General Tojo for planning and directing the war from the attack on Pearl Harbor and beyond while he was prime minister, certainly there is enough hard evidence to bring charges against these people.”
MacArthur did not hesitate in his response. “Pearl Harbor was the beginning of a new war, an uncalled-for series of aggressions against Western nations who had not in any way directly provoked Japan. To me—and I don’t mind saying this—Pearl Harbor was the beginning of World War Two in the Pacific. The Japanese had been operating in China, and even expanding their holdings, for decades. Nanking was principally an ongoing matter between Asians that occurred before our entry into the war. So when did this war actually begin, for our purposes? Shall we also examine the conduct of the British during the Opium Wars? That happened in China, too.”
Colonel Genius was fighting back an incredulo
us scowl. “The rape of Nanking was conducted by the same system, and in large part the same people, who brought us Pearl Harbor, General. It was committed against our ally, the Chinese. The perpetrators should not be allowed to escape justice.”
“We will pursue justice, Colonel. But there is a distinction here.”
The supreme commander paused, measuring Genius for a moment and then looking out his window at the Imperial Palace grounds. “And there is another point. Do you, or I, dare even to imagine that we can lay out before a court of law the intricate, historically driven circumstances under which the emperor of Japan received advice and participated in the making of policy decisions? I don’t think so.”
Genius stared quietly at the supreme commander, unanswering. Finally MacArthur turned back to him and continued. “The emperor will never be charged. We will not make fools of him or of ourselves through such a process. As for the rest of it, on the other political issues there may be some question. I’ll await your further analysis, Colonel. On the military issues, there are none.”
Genius held MacArthur’s gaze, then nodded to his assistant, who began taking notes. “The military issues meaning General Matsui, I assume?”
“Precisely.”
Genius nodded, understanding exactly what MacArthur meant. He now seemed tired, as if all the adrenaline had suddenly drained out of his system. “Very well, sir. We’ll charge him and let the matter be tested in court.” He waited for a moment, as if looking for more, then deliberately tweaked the supreme commander one more time. He was going to make MacArthur say it. “None of the others?”
“I told you about the others,” frowned MacArthur, glancing over to the impassive Willoughby and then to Court Whitney, who merely returned a mirror of his own frown. “At present, we’re lacking sufficient information to proceed in a court of law.”
