Supreme Commander

by Seymour Morris, Jr.

  However, the emperor still needed to become more assertive and independent. “Hirohito was so controlled by the militarists that he nearly had to get permission to go to the bathroom,” MacArthur observed. Those days were over. MacArthur would put the militarists out of business in due course; right now he needed to give the emperor a gentle nudge. No fool, Hirohito caught on quickly. In a subsequent meeting with the supreme commander he asked permission to leave his 240-acre estate and travel around the country and offer blessings and support for his people. MacArthur nodded and suggested, in the same vein, that it might be a good idea for Crown Prince Akihito, who was twelve, to have an American tutor to educate him in American democratic ways. The emperor concurred, and requested that the tutor be an “American woman of cultural background and maturity.” MacArthur liked this idea, for much the same reason that he would become such a forceful proponent of women’s rights: Many Japanese men were militarists; Japanese women were not. Better the boy have a woman tutor than a man. In 1946 a U.S. educational commission came to Japan to upgrade Japan’s school system. MacArthur asked the chairman, George D. Stoddard, to recruit a tutor for the crown prince. Stoddard chose Elizabeth Gray Vining, a Quaker teacher and author of several children’s books, who immediately came to Japan and ended up staying for four years.

  The emperor, following Thorpe’s advice, would undergo a major transformation in his role and public image. In just three months, on January 1, 1946, the emperor would announce to the Japanese people that he was not divine (causing a Texas congressman to remark that “the real reason the Emperor came out and said he wasn’t God was because he found that MacArthur was”). To humanize Hirohito, SCAP had him go on extensive inspection tours throughout the country and attend concerts, art exhibits, sports events, and other public gatherings. Gone were the uniform and military medals, leaving a man dressed in a business suit like a civilian. The Japanese were shocked to learn that the emperor owned lots of Western suits, military uniforms, and pairs of shoes, and not one Japanese kimono or a pair of clog shoes. Instead of Japanese miso broth and fish for breakfast, he ate bacon, eggs, and toast. Such revelations did nothing to diminish his stature; instead they only endeared him more to the public. Even the news about the American tutor for the crown prince enhanced the emperor’s reputation.

  Anybody who thought the emperor was getting off easily, however, was mistaken. MacArthur, after his meeting with Hirohito, assigned Elliott Thorpe to be the official custodian of the emperor and his household, meaning that any foreigner who wanted to meet with the emperor had to go through Thorpe. That was for starters. Next, the supreme commander demanded a complete list of all holdings at home and abroad by the Japanese government and its war allies, plus all Allied properties seized during the war. The list had to include the personal holdings of Emperor Hirohito. Whatever alarm bells had rung in the Imperial Palace when MacArthur arrested Kido now turned into shock waves. The days of Hirohito’s vast land holdings were numbered. Gone were the days when he had three thousand servants at his beck and call. A new era of democracy and austerity had arrived, and within months most of the servants were let go.

  If the emperor and his translator had been less preoccupied when they came to meet the supreme commander for the first time on September 27, they might have noticed lying on the coffee table a copy of the September 17 issue of Time magazine. History does not tell us whether the emperor read a translation of this issue, but for sure someone high up in the Japanese government did, and picked up this story about the U.S. State Department’s report on Japanese atrocities:

  The State Department report was a compilation of some 240 separate protests made to the enemy while the war raged. Behind the stiff, formal language was apparent the rage which must have gripped [State] Secretaries Hull and Stettinius every time a new atrocity account came in. The Department had refrained from public outburst as long as the war was on. But now some of the tale could be told.

  It covered the familiar stories of lack of hospitals, lack of food and clothing, vermin-infested camp, corporal punishment of prisoners, death by decapitation of a U.S. airman in New Guinea, name not disclosed. (From Korea came a story of U.S. prisoners on Jap ships, crazed with thirst, biting their arms and drinking their own blood, perishing when the ships were bombed by U.S. planes.)

  But among all the cases cited in the long and sickening report, one stood out in its barbaric horror.

  The date was Dec. 14, 1944. The place was Puerto Princesa in the Philippines. On that date in that place Jap guards drove 150 U.S. prisoners into air-raid tunnels, emptied gasoline into the tunnel openings and set them afire. The victims, enveloped in flames and screaming in agony, swarmed from the shelters. As they did, they were bayoneted or machine-gunned. About 40 who threw themselves over a 50-ft. cliff onto a beach were attacked by sentries on the shore. Many, moaning in agony, were buried alive.

  One who swam into the sea was recaptured. A Jap soldier poured gasoline on his foot and set it afire, finally set fire to his other foot and to both his hands. In the end the Japs bayoneted their victim, poured gasoline over him and watched the flames until his body was consumed.

  Last week the pestilential camps of the Japanese Empire continued to disgorge their victims (2,900 from Niigata, 3,495 from Nagoya, 1,100 from Tientsin). The record of horror grew.

  The number of Americans killed by the Japanese in World War II was 100,997. Among other nations the toll was far greater. From 1931 to 1945 the Japanese Empire had killed 17.2 million people in fourteen countries, ranging from 10 million in China, 3 million in the Netherlands East Indies, 1.5 million in Bengal . . . down to 10,000 in New Zealand. Even worse than the number of deaths was the brutality of many of these deaths and deliberate attacks on innocents. Among the favorite targets of Japanese warplanes, for instance, were field hospitals, plainly marked with the Red Cross sign.

  Back in America there was little love lost by the American public for “the Japs.” Americans were outraged by the infamous Pearl Harbor attack and the harsh treatment of American war prisoners. A November 1944 Gallup poll showed 13 percent of Americans favored killing all the people in Japan after war ended. Even the New York Times ran articles on the feasibility of eliminating the Japanese race. Another survey three months before the surrender showed that some 33 percent of Americans were in favor of executing the emperor with no trial, while a majority favored convicting him as a war criminal. In Washington, Representative John Rankin spoke of the Japanese as “savage apes,” and Georgia’s distinguished senator Richard B. Russell Jr. called them “bestial.”

  Early in the occupation the Japanese premier, Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni, had caused an uproar in SCAP when he said: “If you in the United States will forget Pearl Harbor, we will forget Hiroshima.” The Japanese were astonished at the anger this remark stirred in the Americans: Japan had always started hostilities by surprise attack. To people with a militarist mind-set, Pearl Harbor was normal. What was on trial, in the Japanese view, was not responsibility but defeat. MacArthur’s job would be to change this amoral thinking.

  Under MacArthur, Hirohito would be spared, but not the militarists. “The surrender terms are not soft, and they won’t be applied in kid-glove fashion,” MacArthur announced. “The overall objectives for Japan have been clearly outlined in the surrender terms and will be accomplished in an orderly, concise, and comprehensive way.”

  Immediately after the Missouri signing, MacArthur issued an order for the arrest of forty top generals, the most prominent of whom was Hideki Tojo, prime minister from 1941 to 1944. On September 8, the day MacArthur arrived in Tokyo, Tojo was arrested. To beat the rap, he shot himself in the chest but missed his heart. After a life-saving operation by American surgeons, Tojo was in the hospital recovering. Among his other medical needs was a custom-fitted set of dentures—a present from the United States government. Two American military dentists undertook the task, secretly etching on the patient’s teeth three words in Morse code: “Remember
Pearl Harbor.”

  PART TWO

  VIGOROUS EXECUTION

  9

  Organizing for Success

  IN THE SPRING of 1945, students at a special Civil Affairs Training School at Harvard University played policy games by composing handbooks for a hypothetical military government under “General MacNimitz”—a compound of the two leading contenders for the job after the successful invasion of Japan. Nimitz or MacArthur would suspend the operations of the national government and replace its top-level officers with Americans. Members of the imperial household, including the emperor, would be taken into custody.

  Just because MacArthur had had a good meeting with the emperor didn’t mean he had solved the emperor problem. The Joint Chiefs asked MacArthur if it was possible to combine the imperial institution with democratic government. He responded that it was possible, so long as great care was taken. Putting the emperor on trial, satisfying though it might be for most people in America, would doom the occupation’s prospects. “Underground chaos and guerilla warfare in mountainous and outlying regions would result,” and would require a million troops to maintain order.

  That kind of number quickly ended the discussion. It was to be the best-kept secret of the entire six and a half years that America ruled Japan: its vulnerability. Military occupations are extremely labor-intensive. One can never have enough troops, meaning that much of an occupation’s success depends on political relations with the subject population. This was particularly true in the case of Japan. After a huge world war the U.S. Army was under relentless pressure to release troops from duty. The number of troops available to MacArthur would decrease over time—just when most military occupations would need more troops, not less. Given the winding down of the number of American troops and the first priority being Europe, few troops would be available for a surge should he need it.

  How long would the occupation have to last? Some members of Congress said possibly as long as twenty years. MacArthur was more specific. According to his preliminary plan for occupying Japan, known as Operation Blacklist, the military occupation would be for five years and consist of three phases: one year for post-surrender consolidation, three years for demilitarization/disarmament, and one year for peace treaty and withdrawal of military forces from Japan. This proved to be a realistic prediction. By 1950 the United States was ready to end the occupation; the only reason it stayed until early 1952 was international tensions and the 1950 outbreak of war in Korea.

  Generals often do their most significant work before the major fighting begins. When it does start, they must have a sixth sense—the mysterious ability to sense battlefield developments. Both traits would serve MacArthur well in his peacetime role as supreme commander. He had strong views about what needed to be done concerning the emperor, political reform, the Japanese constitution, Japanese militarism, and humanitarian aid. He would keep the Japanese government in place and have SCAP function in a supervisory role rather than implement the orders itself. SCAP was to be an advisory organization rather than an executive one (akin to a staff as opposed to a line function). Demobilization, construction, transport, education, health care, banking, and other basic functions—to the fullest extent possible—would be carried out by the Japanese themselves. Speed was of the essence. The faster the Americans got out of Japan, the better. Once Japan fulfilled the requirements of the Potsdam Declaration, there would be little left for a military force to do. Prolonging the occupation would only give rise to a “colonial” psychology and stir local resentment.

  Make no mistake about it, thought MacArthur, the occupation must be comprehensive. The British begged to differ. When shown an early draft of U.S. policy, they argued that all the Allies had to do was occupy major military points and put on occasional demonstrations of military power. Sir George Sansom, a leading authority on Japanese history, claimed that sweeping reforms were not needed to convert Japan into an acceptably democratic state. MacArthur, who fancied himself a man with a keen understanding of the Oriental mind, disagreed totally.

  Unlike Eisenhower in Germany, MacArthur encouraged his soldiers to mingle and fraternize with the occupied population, and to give out chocolates to children. The Japanese people, surprised by such openness and friendliness, called them “the happy soldiers.” “Wherever Americans went,” observed Elizabeth Vining, the American writer hired by the emperor to tutor the crown prince, “the children crowded about, shy, curious, friendly, smiling. Children reflect what they hear at home. If there was hatred and bitterness and talk of revenge in the family circle, the children would not swarm with obvious delight about the foreigner.”

  They were our best ambassadors, MacArthur said of his 500,000 soldiers (eventually reduced to 118,000 in 1948, and 75,000 in 1951). The supreme commander and his officials ran a tight ship, brooking no abuse or offense to Japanese dignity. Knowing how short of food most Japanese people were, the supreme commander forbade soldiers to accept invitations to eat in Japanese homes. Japanese food was reserved for the Japanese. If an American soldier was invited to a Japanese home for dinner, he must bring his own food and he must be back by eleven o’clock. The only cultural items allowed to be purchased by American servicemen were discarded samurai swords; everything else must remain in Japan; there was to be no plundering whatsoever of the country’s artistic heritage. When a soldier broke into a Japanese teahouse, MacArthur had him sentenced to ten years’ hard labor. Any American caught slapping a Japanese citizen automatically got a five-year jail sentence. When the newspapers publicized this draconian ruling, the Japanese were stunned that a conqueror could be so tough on itself. “That,” marveled one Japanese man to an American journalist, “was when we knew we had lost the war.”

  Equally correct behavior was expected of the Japanese, and Americans let them know it. When the emperor tried to curry favor with an important official from Washington by giving him a solid gold cigarette case with an inscription, the official returned it immediately. When a Japanese government minister visiting Japanese being held in prison by SCAP stated, “I wish to lodge a formal complaint—there is no heat whatsoever in this prison,” General Eichelberger responded: “I fully agree, it is a disgraceful state of affairs. You fellows should have had heating installed when our boys were prisoners here.”

  As in any occupation there were the inevitable incidents of rowdy behavior and a few cases of rape or theft by American soldiers, but by and large the impression they made was very favorable. Likewise, the cooperation and hospitality displayed by the subject Japanese tended to be exemplary.

  By treating the Japanese with magnanimity, MacArthur sought to persuade them of the error of their ways in accepting feudalism and militarism. Observed Masuo Kato, one of the two Japanese reporters at the surrender ceremony on the Missouri:

  We Japanese were poorly led, but we cannot ascribe our misguidance to the militarists and statesmen alone. We were lacking in a fundamental quality as a people, the understanding of the importance of individual liberty and the will to protect it. In its place was only a feudalistic submission to power, and in that respect the whole nation must accept responsibility for the war.

  Added the Japanese historian Toshio Nishi: “The Japanese, accepting defeat, assumed the conqueror must have won because of superior values and institutions.”

  Every organization begins with a mission statement. MacArthur never put it in writing, but the closest he came to expressing one was when he met with an American visitor shortly after arriving in Japan: “We are trying to sow an idea—the idea of freedom, the freedom that roots in religion. If you sow an idea, an army can’t stop it. Secret societies can’t stop it. What we want to do is to release into the life of these millions of people the idea of freedom and democracy.”

  “FROM THE MOMENT of my appointment, I had formulated the policies I intended to follow, implementing them through the Emperor and the machinery of the imperial government,” MacArthur wrote in his memoir.

  This is only somewh
at true. He did develop the specific actions, rules, and regulations. But he already had the Potsdam Declaration of July 26 and a September 6 policy statement known as United States Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan (SWNCC 150/4). The main operating document was a November 3 memorandum from the Joint Chiefs known as JCS 1380/15, acknowledged by MacArthur as “one of the great state papers of modern history.” Written by Gen. John Hilldring, an aide to Army Chief of Staff George Marshall who later became assistant secretary of state, JCS 1380/15 is organized into two sections, “General and Political,” and “Economic, Civilian Supply and Relief, Financial.” This 7,500-word document contains fifty specific directives relating to myriad items like dissolution of paramilitary organizations, emphasis on local government, closure of military research laboratories, authorization of banknotes and legal tender, censorship, protection of cultural and religious objects, repatriation of Korean citizens, and foreign exchange controls.