Supreme Commander

by Seymour Morris, Jr.

  Dedication

  To Alexander C. Hoyt

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  Part One: Taking Control

  1. A President Rolls the Dice

  2. Flying Nine Hundred Miles from Okinawa to Atsugi

  3. “The Most Courageous Act of the Entire War”

  4. Sword Sheathed, but Gleaming in Its Scabbard

  5. “Down but Not Out”

  6. Harry Truman Throws a Fit

  7. The Photograph That Saved a Thousand Ships

  8. What to Do with the Emperor and the Militarists?

  Part Two: Vigorous Execution

  9. Organizing for Success

  10. Occupier as Humanitarian

  11. The Emperor Is Not a Kami

  12. Drawing Up a Utopia

  13. MacArthur Breaks the Impasse

  14. His Most Radical Reform

  15. “He Has a Letter from God”

  16. Russian Trouble

  17. “Where’s Ishii?”

  18. “Cherry Blossoms at Night”

  19. The Nuremberg of the East

  Part Three: Washington Takes Over

  20. George Kennan Pays a Visit

  21. A Shift in Emphasis

  22. “The Greatest Piece of Diplomacy, Ever”

  23. Occupier as Protector

  Part Four: Epilogue

  24. Had He Died at Inchon

  25. A Man Deeply Flawed: How Did He Do It?

  26. Aftermath

  Notes

  Works Cited

  Index

  Photographic Insert

  About the Author

  Also by Seymour Morris Jr.

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Acknowledgments

  THE FIRST QUESTIONS people often ask when they meet an author are: How did you choose to write this book? How long did it take you to write it?

  First things first. When I applied to Harvard Business School many years ago, there was an interesting essay question on the application: If you had not chosen a career in business, which career would you choose? To which I answered, “Write American history” (my major in college). So, after thirty years in business and deciding I wanted to do something new and different with my life, I plunged in and became an author. And, lo and behold, I got my first book published by a major publisher. I was on my way. . . . In late 2012, I was talking with my literary agent about what to do next. There is so much fascinating history out there that often the hardest task for a historian is to try to narrow down all the options and choose a particular subject/theme to focus on. I had a particular topic I had spent several months developing and was passionate about. When I presented it to Alex Hoyt, he cast me a skeptical eye and shot his bullet: “No, no, there’s no market.” (You’re a businessman, remember? You may have a brilliant idea, but if there’s no market . . .) “So what do you suggest?” I asked.

  “In your business career you’ve always dealt with CEOs and government leaders,” he said. “So why don’t you write about one of the greatest feats of American leadership: Douglas MacArthur in Japan?” If only he knew: Just the week before I had resolved to clean up my library of unread books groaning on the bookshelves, and I had donated to a charity William Manchester’s American Caesar, figuring I’d never get around to reading it.

  Properly humbled, off I went to the Argosy Bookstore in New York City, a treasure trove of secondhand books, to buy another copy. When Alex introduced me to Adam Bellow of HarperCollins, I made a two-minute pitch, and he said, “I like it!” and invited me to submit the obligatory forty-page proposal to secure a commitment. In so doing, I realized I had a particular advantage few authors have that can be all-important: an open mind. I was not in love with my subject, I was just intrigued with it. I was able to approach it with a tabula rasa.

  It was an unusual proposal that I submitted. I explained that although many books had been written about MacArthur, and many books about the occupation, no book had been written analyzing why it had been so successful—a sharp contrast to our hard-fought, frustrating effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  As a management consultant who had spent many years working with large organizations and subsequently as an entrepreneur running my own international business, might there be lessons here worth noting? Unlike academics, I must also bring to the task the hands-on lessons I had learned (and not learned) over many years about what it takes to run an organization in which you are on the firing line and responsible for delivering results. I must put myself, as much as possible, in MacArthur’s shoes. What’s your policy? What’s your strategy? How much time do you have? Do you take on two or three objectives, or do you take on ten? What kind of people do you hire? How quickly do you get rid of people who don’t deliver even though they have powerful allies who could stir up trouble?

  What do you tell your investors/bosses (in MacArthur’s case, the president and the Joint Chiefs) when you fundamentally disagree with their priorities? Do you voice your concerns, or do you keep them secret and go ahead and do what you want to do anyway (like MacArthur did in imposing a new Japanese constitution)? How do you handle malcontent employees? Try an extreme example: How do you handle dissidents—like MacArthur did—who actually try to kill you? (Hint: MacArthur invited him for a cup of tea and let him go free.)

  Most difficult of all, how do you handle a host country president or prime minister who doesn’t cooperate as you would want him to? No matter how much you want to pack up and go home, you have to hang in there and keep negotiating.

  The problems of running an organization—especially a military occupation where nobody wants you around—go on and on, they never stop. The pressure is incessant and unrelenting What most impressed me about Douglas MacArthur is that he remained above the fray and always maintained control. He eventually got dismissed, but the fact remains that he had performed his job so well, he might as well leave, there was nothing more for him to do. He had outlived his usefulness.

  And left behind a treasure of achievement worth exploring.

  Second question: “How long did it take you to write it?” It took me exactly one year, only because I had set a deadline for myself: one year, and no more. (Time is money, remember.) In one year I read some 250 books and countless articles, pored through several archives, interviewed several people still alive, and cranked out four hundred pages. I worked day and night. There is a saying in business: “If you want something done, give it to your busiest man.” I was now that busiest man. You’d be amazed how efficient you suddenly become.

  I met my deadline, my book is great (so I thought), nothing more needed to be done. Really? HarperCollins associate editor Eric Meyers and copy editor Susan Llewellyn got their hands on my document and put it through the wringer; it was agonizing, it was awful, there was blood on the floor. After two more months, when all was said and done, they destroyed 10 percent of my book—and made it 30 percent better. Never underestimate what a top book publisher can do for you. (Amazon: Please take note. Those of you thinking of self-publishing, take double note.)

  I had the benefit of superb research facilities provided by the New York Public Library—my office (especially the Milstein Room)—and the Japan Society of New York Library and the MacArthur Archives in Norfolk, Virginia. As I undertook this writing effort, a number of close friends provided unswerving personal support: Arthur, Bob, Bruce, Buz, Copey, Craig, my wife, Gabriela, JC, John, Larry, Lindsay, Nina, Peter, Sandra, and Tony. And of course, Alex Hoyt, a man who does what few literary agents do: he specializes. He knows more history than I will ever know.

  Left out, only because I don’t know who y
ou are, is you, the reader. Author acknowledgments—so far as I can tell—never acknowledge this. Yet praise (and helpful criticism) is the highest honor an author can receive. I only hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I did writing it.

  Douglas MacArthur was a man of major personal flaws and gigantic achievements. When he returned home in 1951, he was the biggest celebrity in America, the man who had saved Japan. Actually, he did more: quite possibly, he saved all of Southeast Asia. Today, because of his failure in Korea, he is largely forgotten (including by me, who had tossed out the Manchester biography of him). How wrong I was! Only by writing this book did I realize what he had accomplished in Japan was what I now conclude was “the greatest achievement by America’s greatest general.” To be sure, not everyone agrees that he was our greatest general, but certainly he was our most decorated—by a huge margin.*

  That we don’t have men like him today in times of critical need is our nation’s loss. How wonderful it might have been to be able to sit down and talk with him. . . .

  Permit me to close with a real-life coincidence. In the course of my research, I stumbled on a 1947 Fortune article with a photo of Col. William T. Ryder. I was blown away: I knew William Ryder well. He was a founder of the American paratroopers, I had stayed at his home many times. He was the father of one of my closest prep school friends at St. George’s School, who turned out to be MacArthur’s godson! (I never knew this, and the Ryders never name-dropped this fact.) When I tracked down my long-lost classmate and asked him about his godfather, he regretted he had never inquired deeply.

  So I say to you: Whenever you meet a great man, do not—do not—let the moment slip by. History missed is history forgotten.

  —Seymour Morris Jr.

  Preface

  IN LATE 1943 Winston Churchill received a confidential memo from a British officer serving as UK liaison to Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Churchill wanted to know what kind of man this was who was commanding the American campaign in the South Pacific.

  “He is shrewd, selfish, proud, remote, high-strung and vastly vain. He has imagination, self-confidence, physical courage and charm, but no humor about himself, no regard for truth, and is unaware of these defects. He mistakes his emotions and ambitions for principles. With moral depth he would be a great man: as it is he is a near-miss, which may be worse than a mile . . . his main ambition would be to end the war as a pan-American hero in the form of generalissimo of all Pacific theatres.”

  Less than two years later this man did become the generalissimo of all Pacific theaters, responsible for leading Japan away from militarism and feudalism and toward democracy.

  The American occupation of Japan was without question the most successful—and possibly the only—successful occupation of a defeated nation ever attempted. The fact that after it was over and the defeated country eventually went on to become a world power in its own right tends to color our view of history. We think of Japan’s path to democracy and economic prosperity as obvious, something to be expected of such a hardworking and diligent people.

  It was not. When the war ended no one knew what path Japan would take. It was a country living on the edge. Totally destroyed and humiliated, with hardly a friend in the world after all the brutality it had inflicted on its neighbors in Southeast Asia and the Southern Pacific, its prospects were bleak. Its most likely future appeared to be either a return to fascist repression, or a Communist revolution.

  Into this huge void fraught with danger, the United States sent Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the most decorated military general of World War I and World War II. Knowing the magnitude—not to mention the difficulty—of this mission, President Truman gave him a majestic title never given any American before or since: Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. Victorious in battle, he must strive to be victorious in peace.

  Never before in the history of the United States “had such enormous and absolute power been placed in the hands of a single individual.” Certainly no general faced a more awesome task, one that generals normally are not prepared for.

  His five-year rule of Japan before the Korean War ranks as one of America’s greatest feats of leadership, a guide to how to occupy another country that our military failed to employ in later occupations such as Iraq. He achieved his occupation of a bellicose country notorious for assassinations and kamikaze warriors with only a relative handful of troops and masterful use of leadership and psychology. “The greatest gamble in history,” he said. It was more than that, it was a first: the only occupation, said the prime minister of the defeated country, “without a single shot being fired.”

  Many people believed that a twenty- or fifty-year occupation would be needed to reform Japan; instead MacArthur did it in five—just as he had predicted. The Americans expected treachery and resistance; the Japanese, for their part, expected rapine and pillage. What emerged was a happy surprise for both the conqueror and the conquered. Almost everything MacArthur set out to do, he achieved. He demonstrated that Rudyard Kipling was wrong about occupier country and subject country: The twain did meet. No man rose higher, stirring people with his powerful oratory, than MacArthur. Yet, coming at a time when most of the world’s attention was focused on Europe, what he accomplished ended up being “one of the worst-reported stories in history,” observed renowned journalist John Gunther. Today MacArthur is largely forgotten, just as he predicted: old soldiers fade away. His accomplishment, which stands at the pinnacle of military occupations, is a remarkable story where America performed well.

  AS GEN. DOUGLAS MACARTHUR surveyed the devastation and poverty of broken-down Japan, he may have reflected—as he frequently did—on how he was almost always right. At the beginning of the year, in January 1945, he had sent President Roosevelt a forty-page memorandum containing five top-secret Japanese peace overtures, two obtained through American channels and three through the British, all contingent on the United States guaranteeing to preserve the emperor. And what had he gotten in return? A backhanded slap from FDR: “MacArthur is our greatest general and our poorest politician.”

  Do presidents have better judgment than generals? Unlike the president, as Japan’s plight worsened in the waning days of World War II, MacArthur had come to view the atom bomb as unnecessary. When the new president, Harry Truman, consulted his advisors about the military need to use the atom bomb or not, he never consulted the man who knew the Japanese situation better than anybody, Douglas MacArthur. To complete the conquest of Japan, the president and the army chief of staff, George C. Marshall, planned for the one-million-man Operation Downfall, an invasion of Japan to be led by MacArthur. Once again MacArthur disagreed.

  He thought Japan was on its knees because of the Jimmy Doolittle raids and the naval blockade engineered by Admiral Nimitz. Japan’s surrender was just a matter of time as the U.S. Navy continued to sink Japanese ships and cut off imports of food and essential supplies. No bomb or invasion was necessary; just keep hammering away and wait it out. In this bold view MacArthur was not alone. Joining him were no less than the five-star admirals Chester Nimitz, William Leahy, and Ernest King, the five-star air force general Henry “Hap” Arnold, and the former ambassador to Japan for ten years, Joseph Grew. A greater lineup of expertise could hardly be assembled.

  Their strategy for ending the war: a siege. It lacks the drama of a battlefield victory or a city blown to smithereens by a bomb, but it works. It is the professional soldier’s weapon of choice. It saves lives, both for the attacker as well as the defender.

  In Washington, President Franklin Roosevelt—like Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Secretary of State James Byrnes, Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and Army Chief of Staff Marshall—thought differently. And so President Truman would claim he had acted on the urgent advice of his military advisors. Not true. He relied on Marshall and the civilian advisors.

  WHEN MACARTHUR AND the admirals arrived in Japan for the surrender, they would find the Japanese people suffering from massive hunger and disea
se even worse than they—or anybody in Washington—ever imagined. They were stunned to learn that had there been no atom bomb and no invasion, just a blockade, within two months ten million Japanese might have starved to death. So said the Japanese minister of finance to the United Press. Even if the minister was wrong by a month or two, still, ten million of the enemy killed with no American casualties might have been a better way to bring the war to an end.

  No point making an issue about it. The American generals and admirals would be quiet, and the American public would never know. Let the public be told, as President Truman said, that the bomb had been dropped to save American lives. The public would not be told that the bomb had saved a lot more Japanese lives than otherwise. And that maybe it hadn’t been necessary in the first place (other than serve as a warning that such a weapon never be used by anybody ever again).

  Every great enterprise begins with a philosophy, a mission statement. Now entering Japan to occupy and rule the country was the larger-than-life “I shall return!” general the Japanese feared the most. Yet he would not be the man they expected: a man on a white horse. To the contrary, he—who knew Japanese brutality firsthand—would bear no ill will. By his generosity to a vanquished militaristic nation and the ideals he espoused through his magnificent oratory, he would demonstrate the better angels of human nature and push for the Japanese abolition of war, though he was no pacifist.

  Yet when he died in 1964, he would not be remembered for these deeds. Newspaper and magazine articles would extol his military exploits, with nary a word said about his greatest achievement, for which he had hoped to be remembered.

  PART ONE

  TAKING CONTROL

  1

  A President Rolls the Dice

  HE HAD NEVER met the man. Never even talked to him . . . not once.

  In 1945, on August 12, the president of the United States was about to make a decision. A decision based on incomplete information, yet one that had to be made one way or another whether he liked it or not. To procrastinate would only be another form of decision. Japan was now defeated: the Tokyo air raids, the two atom bombs, and the naval blockade had assured closure. Peace negotiations were well under way; any moment an agreement would be reached. There was one stumbling block: the Japanese demand that there be no occupation of their country, which of course was totally unacceptable to the United States. There would be an occupation, and to make sure the Japanese got the message, Truman would appoint as head of it America’s most successful general, the man the Japanese feared most: Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the man who had conquered the Philippines and electrified the nation—and terrified the Japanese—with his poignant slogan, “I shall return!”