SCAP had successfully cracked down on the hated Kempeitai, or military police. The Civil Administration and Education Section, nicknamed the “American Ministry of Japanese Education,” was busy screening militarist doctrine from the education system and eliminating secondary-school courses on how to repair gliders, use bayonets, or throw hand grenades. Textbooks were being cleaned up, no longer allowing math questions like: “If one machine gun will kill ten Americans, how many will kill one hundred?” The books could discuss the atom bomb, so long as they also discussed the Rape of Manila or the Rape of Nanking. They also had to include an explanation of the war itself: America used the bomb only to terminate a war it did not start. Absolutely forbidden were statements like: “Japan might have won the war but for the atom bomb, a weapon only barbarians would use.”
Movement in and out of the country was tightly controlled. No one, except with the personal permission and approval of General MacArthur, was allowed into the country, considered in military terms to be a highly restricted theater of operations. Visitors to Japan needed to carry their military permit number with them at all times; military police were everywhere and would ask for it. SCAP’s chief of counterintelligence threatened censorship of any news or information that “disturbs the public tranquility.” Forbidden topics included Emperor Hirohito as a ruler, SCAP’s role in drafting the Japanese constitution, and the glory of the great emperor Meiji. No criticism or cartoon caricatures of MacArthur ever appeared in the newspapers. SCAP directives stated that “news must adhere strictly to the truth . . . there should be no destructive criticisms of the Allied Forces of Occupation.”
One of the people invited to Japan was Roger Baldwin, the principal founder and executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Baldwin came to Japan expecting to find all kinds of problems with SCAP’s censorship restrictions. Instead, to his surprise, he fell under the MacArthur spell: “Why, that man knows more about civil liberties than I do!” Baldwin stayed in Japan for ten weeks and, with MacArthur’s full support, created the Japan Civil Liberties Union.
The American military engineers conducted almost all the new construction and repairs to dams, dikes, roads, and bridges. SCAP’s financial books were in perfect order. There were no procurement scandals, no corruption in the awarding of contracts, no embezzlement. MacArthur had reason to be pleased with himself. The peasant landholders, the factory workers, and the women—three large constituencies comprising 80 percent of the adult population—all appreciated what he had done. He had spared no one in his effort to democratize and demilitarize Japan. He had done more than just occupy the country, he had instituted widespread and massive reform.
IT IS WHEN everything is going well that the darkest clouds often appear on the horizon. From a distance they can sometimes be noticed, if only barely. Back in February 1946, presidential advisor John J. McCloy (later high commissioner of Germany and president of the World Bank) had visited Tokyo, gotten the full MacArthur charm treatment, and come away dazzled. “My God, how does he do it?” he sputtered to Faubion Bowers. “He’s in better health than when I saw him before the war . . . more fascinating than when he was Chief of Staff [1930–35]. . . . What a man! What a man!”*
In his report, however, McCloy expressed concern that liberal reforms would drive Japan “further left” and the war criminals trial would be a total “fiasco.” Given that wartime Japan had probably been the most right-wing nation on the face of the earth, it is hard to imagine how MacArthur could be accused of driving Japan too far to the left. (It reminds one of the quip that the Founding Fathers could never get the U.S. Constitution ratified today because it is too radical.)
For a man as brilliant as John McCloy to make such an off-target remark suggested that the problems were deeper than the liberal reforms or controversial war trials. His comment said more about Washington than about Japan. Trouble was brewing back home, and McCloy, the ultimate Washington insider, was a man in the know. What was occurring was a change of heart, a reordering of how to fit Japan into America’s global priorities. MacArthur’s expanding the purge of militarists, dissolving major industries, returning land to the peasants, and calling for an end of the occupation was not what Cold War warriors in Washington wanted to hear. Originally, when the occupation started, New Deal planners were in control in Washington. Now with Truman firmly ensconced as president, a new cast of characters was emerging who had little sympathy for MacArthur’s moral crusade.
On March 17, 1946, the supreme commander gave his first press conference since the early days in Australia in 1942. “The time has now approached that we must talk peace with Japan,” he announced. A prolonged occupation would only cause economic strangulation. This was also an opportunity for the newly created peace organization to show what it could do: “If the United Nations can’t function now, it never will,” he warned.
While almost everyone focused on the political implications of his speech, few paid attention to the thrust of what he was really saying: The occupation with all its restrictions was strangling Japan’s economy. “Japan is not producing enough to satisfy her needs,” he said. “The difference must be filled by the Allies. If we keep this economic blockade up, more and more we will have to support this country. It is an expensive luxury. But we will pay for it or let people die by the millions.” The population of Japan, seventy-two million in 1945, was now eighty million after the return of soldiers and the postwar baby boom. The country, cut off from trade with adjoining countries, simply could not produce enough food to feed itself. Nor could its economy grow. “We do not allow Japan to trade,” he complained. “She has got to be allowed to trade with the world. Japan is only permitted a barter system through the bottleneck of SCAP. We’ve got to take it out of the hands of the Government and put it in the hands of private traders.” If Japan was to survive, it must be permitted to rebuild its manufacturing capacity, conduct international trade, and import food. Without major changes, Japan’s economy would remain in the doldrums, leaving the United States no choice other than to provide massive amounts of foreign aid. “No weapon, not even the atom bomb, is as deadly in its final effect as economic warfare,” he said. “The atom bomb kills by the thousands, starvation by the millions.”
MacArthur’s speech did little to calm Washington. To the contrary, it demonstrated once again his unique ability to stir up a hornets’ nest back home. SCAP’s program, said George Kennan, was causing “economic disaster, inflation . . . near anarchy which would be precisely what the Communists want.” Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall announced that it “really amounted to socialism, pure and simple, if not communism.” The Army undersecretary, William Draper, a Wall Street bond trader, joined the fray: SCAP had turned Japan into an economic “morgue.” James Lee Kauffman, a Wall Street lawyer and close friend of Royall and Draper, wrote a blistering article in Newsweek calling SCAP’s economic program “far to the left of anything tolerated in America.”
Be that as it may, these critics ignored the fact that MacArthur’s original directive from Washington contained the specific instruction not to “assume any responsibility for the economic rehabilitation or the strengthening of the Japanese economy”—good advice at the time. Now, apparently, times had changed. MacArthur claimed that reviving Japan’s economy required loosening its ties with the United States. Washington policy makers argued the opposite, that economic revival required closer ties to resurrect the great Japanese enterprises of old, the family holding companies. What made the gulf between MacArthur and the policy makers so vast was that they were ten thousand miles apart. MacArthur thought primarily of what was best for Japan; the Washington policy makers thought of what was best for the United States. MacArthur thought of Asia; Marshall, now secretary of state, thought of the whole globe.
The supreme commander was becoming a major thorn in Washington’s side, too independent for his own good. Marshall, Undersecretary of State Acheson, Defense Secretary Forrestal, Kennan—the head of
the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff—and President Truman (all “Europe first” proponents) concluded that the Soviet Union was a threat of the highest order. MacArthur, who had more firsthand experience dealing with the Russians than any of them, took a more sanguine view, feeling it was a threat that could be managed.
How could a conservative Republican be such a socialist? How could a military man be so unmilitaristic? MacArthur defied being pigeonholed. He was—and this is what most scared his superiors—unpredictable.
At a time when there was growing concern about the Communist trend in China and the need to make Japan a pinnacle in U.S. security, MacArthur was preaching independence for Japan. In early February 1947, he told a delegation of congressmen (headed by Secretary of the Interior Julius A. Krug) that a formal peace treaty would promote the democratization of Japan, and that the longer the occupation continued, the more dependent Japan’s economy would become on the United States—which was not good. He wrote a letter to Congress saying that “military occupations serve their purpose at best for only a limited time, after which deterioration rapidly sets in.” He followed up by sending his aide George Atcheson to Washington to make the case for independence; Atcheson’s words fell on deaf ears. MacArthur was saying things Washington did not want to hear. It was now time for Washington to start exerting more control.
And rein in the “bunco man.”
“We’ve Been Using More of a Roundish One”
ENTER 1948, KNOWN in the Japanese calendar as the Year of the Mouse. Leading the charge was the army secretary, Kenneth Royall. On January 6, 1948, he gave a speech saying that “the men who were most active in building up and running Japan’s war machine” were the ones most qualified to “contribute to the economic recovery of Japan.” He went on to argue in favor of building up Japan to “serve as a deterrent against any other totalitarian war threat which might hereafter arise in the Far East.”
A month later the barrage continued. This time it was from the State Department’s George Kennan: “We should cease to talk about vague and—for the Far East—unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
Needless to say, disparaging idealism was not a good way to win the supreme commander’s good graces. He was delighted when one of his friends in the office of the Assistant Secretary of State for Occupied Areas responded that seeking to contain Soviet expansionism by abandoning democracy and economic reform was like arguing that “democracy must be abandoned in order to be defended.”
In March, George Marshall, now secretary of state, sent Kennan to Japan. Before you leave, said Marshall to Kennan, let me give you some advice: You are going to meet a very difficult man with a colossal ego. So please do not get into an argument. The man is supersmart, probably even smarter than you are. Listen carefully, be sure to flatter him, and ignore his satraps—military officers, political advisors, and flunkies.
MacArthur, in the meantime, was not thrilled about Kennan’s forthcoming visit. He knew that Kennan, called “America’s Global Planner” by the New York Times correspondent Brooks Atkinson, was the author of the famous “X” article published in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, urging containment of Communism and the Soviet Union. MacArthur felt he was doing just fine in that area. If Kennan wanted a briefing, muttered MacArthur to his staff, “I’ll have him briefed until it comes out of his ears!”
It would be a meeting of two of the sharpest minds in the American government, two men who couldn’t have been more dissimilar, coming at a problem from different perspectives. No sooner had Kennan gotten off the plane than he was taken to lunch with MacArthur. Totally worn out after forty-eight hours without sleep on a freezing cold slowpoke propeller plane, Kennan viewed himself as “a civilian David” taking on “a military Goliath.” For two hours the supreme commander conducted one of his nonstop monologues, this one comparing his occupation of Japan to Caesar’s occupation of Gaul, “the only other historical example of a productive military occupation.” He claimed the great events of the next thousand years were to take place in the Orient—not Europe—and that by planting the seeds of Christianity and democracy in Japan, America had a unique opportunity to “fundamentally alter the course of world history.” The Japanese, MacArthur assured his visitor, were “thirsting for guidance and inspiration.” The two hours, thought Kennan, reminded him of what Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida had said after emerging from MacArthur’s office for the first time: It was like hearing a lecture inside a lion’s cage with a pacing lion. As Kennan stared at MacArthur, a quite different animal came to mind: a horse. A wild, strong horse that needed to be tethered.
And he, George Kennan, would have to be the one to do it. In his memoirs he would describe his mission to Japan as like being “an envoy charged with opening up communications and establishing diplomatic relations with a hostile and suspicious foreign government.” He wasn’t talking about Japan, he was talking about the MacArthur regime. The next day Kennan was treated to a lengthy briefing by two SCAP officers, which he regarded as bordering on an insult for a man in his senior position. He kept his cool, however, and following Marshall’s advice to use flattery, sat down and wrote a letter. He reminded the supreme commander that he had come to Japan “to inquire—and to carry back to Gen. Marshall—your view of the broad framework of concepts which ought to underlie the decisions we shall soon have to take concerning our future course in Japan, and to give you any information that may be useful to you on the pattern of our over-all foreign policy problems, as we see them in Washington.”
While MacArthur was digesting this sweet pabulum, one of Kennan’s aides, who had served in the Tokyo Embassy before the war, met with one of his former colleagues now working at SCAP and arranged for Kennan to give a briefing on the Soviet Union for senior SCAP officers. Kennan delivered a stellar performance. General Willoughby immediately relayed his impressions to MacArthur, and the next day Kennan was summoned for a private dinner with the big man himself. In a congenial evening thoroughly enjoyed by both men, MacArthur informed Kennan that he had toned down some of the more radical democratization requests coming out of Foggy Bottom [the State Department]. He agreed with Kennan to ignore objections by the Allies and do his best to rehabilitate Japan’s economy so the country could contribute constructively to the stability and prosperity of the Far Eastern region. The visiting diplomat noted that no proper provision had been made for Japan’s defense, and that for America to sign a peace treaty and pull out, leaving Japan defenseless, would be premature. There was still a lot more work to do, especially in completing the land reform program (only one-seventh finished) and the strengthening of economic enterprises. MacArthur did not disagree.
There were still some occupation problems that had to be dealt with, such as the increase in gambling, prostitution, and narcotics traffic. Also troublesome was the booming black market, where the U.S. armed forces were getting favorable exchange rates for their dollars, enabling them to remit to America every month eight million dollars more than their total pay. Observed Kennan wryly: “The personal enrichment of members of the Occupation was not always absent.”
They talked about Communism. MacArthur, of course, knew all about the “X” article and Kennan’s position on the subject. He told Kennan he valued civil liberties more than the possible threat of subversives, leftists, and even Communists. “We have probably got some of them. The War Department has some. So does the State Department. It doesn’t mean very much.”
Then Kennan pulled off a clever move. Knowing how the supreme commander detested the Far Eastern Commission and its Russian veto power—a feeling shared by Kennan—he pointed out that the FEC’s scope was more limited than anyone had originally realized. The way Kennan interpreted the FEC’s mandate, it applied only to supervising the surrender terms and not to determining J
apan’s postwar future—meaning that henceforth MacArthur need not worry about having to deal with the FEC. This was a revelation. MacArthur got so excited he slapped his thigh, as if to say, Well done, George! “From that moment,” wrote Kennan, “things went very well.”
Before leaving, Kennan praised MacArthur and his generals for using their great power responsibly and humanely. In a magnificent piece of rhapsody that surely must have thrilled the supreme commander, Kennan stated:
They deserved the respect which must be paid in general to benevolent despotism wherever encountered. I am merely pointing out that these commanders enjoyed something of the same sympathies which I suppose were once addressed to Belisarius by itinerant Byzantines visiting the Italy that rested under his command, enjoying his hospitality, and listening to his complaints about the inept and ignorant interference he had to endure from the imperial court at Constantinople.
“We parted,” concluded Kennan, “having reached a general meeting of the minds.”
And MacArthur went to bed, no doubt imagining himself as a Belisarius coping with the imperial court at Washington.
Kennan was a man who had not only shaped American foreign policy with his “X” article, he had written the first draft of the Marshall Plan. Second to the Marshall Plan, he said, his handling of MacArthur was “the most significant constructive contribution I was ever able to make in government.” Years later, however, after seeing how MacArthur responded and cooperated—“on no other occasion did my recommendations meet with such wide, indeed almost complete acceptance”—he downplayed his contribution. In his 1989 book Sketches from a Life, there was no mention at all of MacArthur or the trip to Japan.
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