Supreme Commander

by Seymour Morris, Jr.

  What to do? The cabinet couldn’t go to Whitney, who had made his position unmistakably clear: No negotiation, “atomic sunshine.” There could be only one solution: The prime minister, like the emperor, would have to go to the supreme commander.

  THE MEETING LASTED three full hours. The two men had met twice before, both times productively: first in early October when MacArthur mentioned constitutional reform, and again in January after the emperor had denied his own divinity. In the second meeting Shidehara, whose wife—an heiress to the Mitsubishi fortune—was a Quaker, brought up the issue of renunciation of war, saying he had no problem including this in the constitution, since Japan had been a signatory to a similar provision in the 1919 League of Nations Covenant and the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact. Shidehara didn’t know it, but by this gesture he had touched on MacArthur’s soft spot. Back in 1930 he had refused to attend the Geneva disarmament conference, saying, “The way to end war is to outlaw war, not to disarm.” MacArthur immediately agreed with the suggestion that there be a provision saying that “the right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.” Such a provision, he said, would relieve the concerns of the Soviet Union and Australia. On that positive note, the two men parted.

  This time, in their third meeting, there would be no sweeping declarations of principle. The two men discussed everything face-to-face, openly and in confidence, made easier because Shidehara spoke perfect English. MacArthur reminded Shidehara that the FEC was beating down on him, he was personally concerned with “the good of Japan,” and that Shidehara was undoubtedly doing “his best for the sake of his country.” Did not the two men share the same goals? The danger to Japan, he told Shidehara, came not from the American government. It came from the Soviet Union and Australia, full of vengeance. “I don’t know how long I can stay at my present position, and I feel great concern when I consider what might happen after I leave.” Asked what Whitney had meant by saying that Japan must accept certain fundamental principles, MacArthur replied that the intent was to preserve the emperor, and that for the emperor position to work, it must be based on a clear statement of popular sovereignty.

  Article 9 would become the most important and controversial part of the new constitution. Matsumoto liked it because he was a pacifist. The supreme commander, no pacifist himself, liked it for other reasons. War had become so deadly as to render the value of victory meaningless. “The enormous sacrifices that have been brought about by scientific methods of killing,” he said, “have rendered war a fantastic and impossible method for the solution of international difficulties.” Since there was no way to control war, the only other thing to do would be to abolish it.

  As in MacArthur’s meeting with the emperor, no transcript survives, a loss to future leaders in a similar situation. Such a transcript—a lesson in statesmanship—would merit careful study. MacArthur and Shidehara had made a pact to “agree to agree.” SCAP officials would sit down with their Japanese counterparts and make a deal, no matter what, and MacArthur would sign off on it.

  Little did the two men know what a marathon it would turn out to be.

  But MacArthur kept his word, and so did Shidehara. Out of a basic agreement in principle between two powerful adversaries, history was made, and Douglas MacArthur—the ultimate gambler—would achieve more than Washington ever dreamed of.

  THE NEXT DAY, Shidehara made his report to the Japanese cabinet, inviting the other ministers to express their views. At first these were decidedly negative. This American document, protested one minister, was “like swallowing boiling water.” Matsumoto complained that there wasn’t enough time to reconcile divergent views, and he was fed up with the abrasive “Whitney group.” Welfare Minister Ashida jumped in and disagreed: Why wasn’t it possible for an esteemed man with Matsumoto’s “scholarship and experience” to do what the Weimar Republic in Germany had done in 1919, write a constitution in three weeks?

  With Matsumoto flummoxed and marginalized, the discussion assumed a cooler tone. The majority agreed that there was room to yield and maneuver. Shidehara would report to the emperor immediately, and to show his sincerity to the Americans he would send the two archconservatives Matsumoto and Yoshida to meet that afternoon with—of all people—the liberal Whitney. If that didn’t send a signal of goodwill, what would? As for Charles Kades, who had never met MacArthur—he wouldn’t until mid-1947—he had his plate full. The supreme commander had spoken from on high: Kades was to forget all his legalese, let what was past be past, compromise and make a deal. And of course, keep your mouth shut. “The revision has to be made by the Japanese themselves and it has to be done without coercion,” MacArthur had decreed—fooling nobody while he snapped a whip over their heads.

  When the Japanese met with Whitney and Kades, they quickly found they had a long way to go. In Whitney’s office, behind his desk, was an enormous painting of a Filipino boy trying to defend his sister from being raped by a Japanese soldier. If the purpose of the painting was to intimidate a Japanese visitor, it certainly had that effect. Trying to avert his gaze from the terrified eyes of the young girl staring down at him, Matsumoto expressed optimism that a deal could be reached and the emperor would be pleased to present a new constitution. Whitney cut him short: A constitution, he said, “comes up from the people, not down to the people”—a fundamental and important distinction. Other, more specific differences dominated the remainder of the meeting. Whereas the Japanese wanted to keep the current constitution and amend it to include the two provisions about the emperor and war, plus whatever minor adjustments might be necessary, the Americans had a broader perspective. The SCAP document, explained Whitney, formed a whole and could not be reorganized or chopped up. Appropriate changes of small points would be permitted, but that was all. The more Matsumoto pressed with specific questions about details such as the preamble, amendment procedures, the Diet, elections, the imperial house law, and the rights and duties of the people, the more obvious it became that the two sides were coming from different directions. Whitney emphasized that the imperial family was not in control of the law, it was under the law, as in England. Matsumoto questioned why renunciation of war was an article of its own, couldn’t it be inserted in the preamble as a principle? No, said Whitney, the supreme commander wanted it prominently displayed so as to attract the world’s attention that Japan was now serious about its rehabilitation.

  Translation remained a major problem. SCAP wanted the constitution to be written in colloquial Japanese to prevent obfuscation by classical rhetoric, whereas the Japanese argued that a literal translation of the American document would not achieve the formality and dignity of a Japanese legal document, especially a constitution. Making a translation into Japanese style would take weeks, and inevitably much of the American meaning might be lost. MacArthur was in a hurry; already months had been wasted; he needed the constitution completed before the FEC tried to take over constitutional reform and possibly deny the emperor’s sovereignty.

  On February 27 Matsumoto and his assistants started work on the judicial translation (actually more of a Japanese draft using the American one as a model). They had two documents to work with: the SCAP version in English, and a literal Japanese translation done by the Foreign Ministry. Their job was to make the Japanese translation legally correct according to Japanese law.

  The Americans expected, when they got the Japanese version, to translate it back into English, match it up side by side with the American original, and find the two virtually the same. That didn’t happen. For example, the American draft said in article 1: “The Emperor shall be the symbol of the State and of the Unity of the People, deriving his position from the sovereign will of the People, and from no other source.” The Japanese version switched the two clauses around and made the emperor look godlike by using the word “supreme” in place of “sovereign”: “The Emperor derives his position from the supreme will of the Japanese People, maintaining his position as a symbol of the State and as an emblem of th
e Unity of the People.” In article 2, the American version said: “Succession to the Imperial Throne shall be dynastic and in accordance with such Imperial House Law as the Diet may enact.” The Japanese version left out the Diet entirely: “The Imperial Throne shall be dynastic and succeeded to in accordance with the Imperial House Law.”

  Another problem for the Americans was that there were in reality two Japanese languages—the classical one and the conversational one. Like the Greeks, who use a modern rather than a classical form of their language, many Japanese could not understand the classical Japanese used by the emperor and the government. Indeed, when the emperor read his announcement of the surrender, the people in one particular village thought he was announcing a great victory and celebrated all night, only to wake up the next morning and realize they had been quite mistaken. When the emperor delivered his message to the first postwar Diet, fewer than half the members of that august body could understand him. When the list of Japanese war criminals was announced, only one out of ten Japanese could read the names. Americans were stunned to learn that the once-mighty country they had taken over was basically illiterate.*

  Throughout the document the Americans found a host of omissions and differences, some of them critical. With time running out, the two sides got together to hash out an agreement. It was like writing a constitution all over again. Back and forth the two sides went, often so frustrated and exhausted that people were on the verge of exchanging physical blows. The Americans made many concessions, several of them by MacArthur personally. In what turned out to be the guiding principle of the constitution drafting, they would use “spoken Japanese instead of the traditional literary style of legal language,” which they found to be “archaic, stilted and inelastic and could not be read, much less understood by the ordinary man.” A constitution should be simple, MacArthur reminded his staffers; they were to remember what FDR said on the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution in 1937: The American Constitution is “a layman’s document, not a lawyer’s.”

  In a thirty-two-hour nonstop, marathon session, the translation got done, bipartisanship at its best. On March 6 the government signed off on the “Japanese Government draft” and it became official on April 17, a week after the general election, which SCAP gladly interpreted as a popular ratification of the document.

  Of course no SCAP deed occurred without an American-style dose of publicity and public relations, especially when Douglas MacArthur was personally involved. To make sure the new constitution would be taken seriously and reverently, a Committee to Popularize the Constitution was organized in the Diet. Advised by Alfred Hussey and Ruth Ellerman of the Government Section, the committee put together an advisory board of prominent politicians and academicians and went into high gear. It divided the country into ten districts, sent experts to conduct training sessions for local public officials, and published twenty million booklets, one per household, titled “The New Constitution! A Bright Light!” The constitution, the booklet gushed, “is the compass of our daily lives . . . the splendid code which will be woven into our ideals and aspirations.” Readers were pleased to learn that “The Japanese people mutually respect individual character. They will correctly practice democracy. With a spirit of love of peace, they will have warm and friendly relations with the countries of the world.” The publicity committee made a special effort to reach out to the citizens of tomorrow. Grade-school and high-school children saw documentary films, put on plays using puppets, participated in essay-writing contests in the local newspaper, and sang musicals about peace and democracy marching onward like Christian soldiers.

  No sooner had the March 6 draft appeared than MacArthur found himself in a fight over it. The State Department and the FEC, kept out of the loop by MacArthur, demanded to know what was going on and why they had not been consulted. The State Department was particularly frustrated: Because SCAP was a military operation, the only way to send an inquiry to MacArthur was through the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the army chief of staff, who didn’t always move with the alacrity normally reserved for generals speaking to generals. This bureaucratic setup ensured delays, which was exactly what MacArthur wanted. The FEC, concerned that there was not enough time before the election for the Japanese people to “express their fully instructed, intelligent and authoritative views on their political future,” sent a letter suggesting a postponement of the election. MacArthur responded with a lengthy essay pointing out that women had been given the right to vote, that the voting age had been lowered, that reactionary personnel had been purged from government, that Japan had several political parties in strong competition, and that there was no need for any special declaration, plus it probably wouldn’t pass legal scrutiny. What else was there to discuss? The letter was so thorough and devastating, said one observer, that anyone reading it “began to suffer from spells of dizziness.”

  The truth of the matter, of course, was that MacArthur and conservative members of the Japanese government like Yoshida wanted the constitution put in place as quickly as possible before the liberals and especially the Communists got their hands on it. This was not an idle threat. Having freed the prisoners and the labor unions, MacArthur knew the dangers on the street and he was in a delicate position, but he could hardly admit this to Washington. Instead he resorted to legalisms, delays, and plain outright arrogance—of which he was a master. Like a general on the march, he would simply steamroll over anybody in his way. In war this wins plaudits; in peacetime politics it makes enemies.

  On March 20 the Far Eastern Commission demanded that the April 10 election be postponed. MacArthur refused. Giving the FEC power to review and approve the constitution in advance of an election would “prejudice many Japanese people against the instrument itself” because they would “look upon it as a thing forced upon Japan at the point of Allied bayonets.” MacArthur went on to demonstrate his propensity for mingling fiction with truth. The FEC had no executive power, he said. Speaking of himself as if he were another person, he reminded the FEC that such power was “reserved exclusively to the Supreme Commander.” To cover himself with the U.S. secretary of state, who had gone on record that the responsibility of managing Japan rested with the FEC, MacArthur explained to Byrnes that the FEC’s function in matters of constitutional reform was “limited to the formulation of guiding policy.”

  The supreme commander surely must have baffled Byrnes with his blubbery phrase. This was only typical of MacArthur. He could soar to Olympian heights with his majestic oratory; he could easily drown his listeners in vacuous and avuncular phraseology. Marveled one of his aides at the boss’s ability to baffle the opposition and escape unscathed: “How do you fight someone you can’t get your hands on?” MacArthur was in his element. He went on to tell the secretary of state that “in the absence of any such policy statement from the Far Eastern Commission, the Supreme Commander is clearly unrestricted in his authority to proceed.”

  “I have acted meticulously,” he opined—lest the secretary of state think differently.

  The FEC, getting tired of MacArthur’s repeated evasions and tergiversations, asked him on April 10—the day of the Japanese election, when the constitution was voted on and passed—to send a representative to Washington right away: “The Commission, in its concern that any constitution adopted by the Japanese should embody the ‘freely expressed will of the Japanese people,’ is particularly interested in the procedures by which it is contemplated a new constitution will be adopted.” One can only imagine the supreme commander’s reaction to such pretentious language when he was in a race against time and there was mounting political ferment in the streets. At the end of April a massive Communist-inspired labor demonstration electrified Tokyo. It attracted more than 400,000 people, giving General Eichelberger heart palpitations.

  A month later, MacArthur deigned to respond to the FEC. In a twenty-page letter that was more like a thesis than a memo—the man liked to write!—he said he welcomed a closer working relationship but
did not think dispatching an officer from his staff to confer with the commission would accomplish anything. In a repeat of his tactics with President Truman, where he said he was indispensable and could not leave Tokyo, he wrote: “As Supreme Commander, I have given my personal attention to the matter of constitutional reform, and there is no other officer in a position to express in detail my views on that subject.”

  How do you deal with a man like this? The State Department diplomatically held back on MacArthur’s missive, and sent another directive. Again no response. The Department of the Army then jumped in and sent a telegram stating how essential it was for the Far Eastern Commission to be afforded an opportunity to examine the new constitution before it took effect. MacArthur responded with a soothing put-down: “This draft provides one of the most liberal constitutions in the world—far more liberal than is that of Russia or China, and certainly no less liberal than that of the United States or England.”

  By now the director of the State Department’s Office of Far Eastern Affairs was in a state of despair. He informed the secretary of state: “No useful purpose would be served by any further discussion of this matter.” The FEC came to a similar conclusion. With the new constitution now in force, on May 13 it sent MacArthur a memo basically raising the white flag in surrender: “Adequate time and opportunity should be allowed for the full discussion and consideration of the terms of the new Constitution.”

  Douglas MacArthur had outmaneuvered, worn down, and flummoxed the opposition. Now all he had to do was make sure the constitution was sufficiently “Japanese.” Everyone knew the Americans had written most of it. There was even a joke going around town: “Have you read the new Constitution yet? . . . No, has it been translated into Japanese?” Yoshida, Shidehara, and Matsumoto worked behind the scenes to line up support and make sure no one questioned the constitution’s legitimacy. The Japanese legislative bodies went through the motions of deliberation and ratification. The lower house, working closely with American lawyers from GHQ, made some minor modifications and passed the bill. The Privy Council conducted no fewer than eleven meetings, going into great detail so no one could say the document was being rubber-stamped. It gave its final approval at the end of October. In doing so it displayed one of the most remarkable examples of political courage and unselfishness ever seen in any country at any time: Because there was no place for it under the new constitution, by voting for the constitution it voted itself out of existence.