Supreme Commander

by Seymour Morris, Jr.

  260 transcript of Wake Island meeting: Bradley, 575.

  260 “Who was that young whippersnapper”: Hastings, 6.

  260 “as close as”: Herring, 642.

  261 “It is difficult”: Barrett, 94.

  261 Marshall’s sarcastic comment about when a general complains: Acheson, 515.

  261 “incapable of holding”: Ibid.

  262 “the Winston Churchill of Japan”: The similarities between the two men are remarkable: Both came from prominent families (though Yoshida was adopted), possessed a quick wit, and were always seen with a cigar. Like Churchill, Yoshida was a man of strong principles who had been thrown out of the government before the war for his unpopular political views. Like Churchill, his return to power was a remarkable feat, and he performed brilliantly. The same debt the United States owes Winston Churchill for helping win World War II, it owes Shigeru Yoshida for helping win postwar Japan.

  263 “very much impressed by”: John D. Rockefeller III, entry of January 27, 1951, Rockefeller Diaries, Rockefeller Center Archive, Sleepy Hollow, NY.

  263 “I came here”: Pacific Stars and Stripes, February 11, 1951, 1, Dulles Collection.

  263 “As our peace mission”: Nippon Times, February 12, 1951, 1, Dulles Collection.

  265 Yokohama bust of MacArthur: Sheldon, 232.

  265 Diet resolution . . . “who helped”: Weintraub, 353.

  265 “shock and sorrow”: Ibid., 346.

  265 joint meeting: The Democrats refused to grant MacArthur the more formal, more prestigious venue known as a joint session.

  265 Two hundred thousand Japanese: MacArthur would claim it was two million, thus exaggerating by a factor of ten. Be that as it may, a turnout of two hundred thousand people—including every important political leader—was a remarkable tribute.

  265 “From the gates”: Smith, 160; Weintraub, 353.

  266 Southeast Asia following Japan’s lead: See Thomas Friedman, New York Times, August 21, 2013, A19: “People in Southeast Asia looked up to Japan—the regional power—as a model: ‘We’re behind, what’s wrong with us? We need to learn from those who are doing better.’ ”

  24: HAD HE DIED AT INCHON

  269 “Well, the German problem . . . like a boy of twelve”: “Military Situation in the Far East,” May 5, 1951, part 1, 312.

  270 “I had thought”: Hiroaki Sato, “Irony of Being in the Company of ‘12-Year-Olds,’ ” Japan Times, June 25, 2012.

  270 “the child”: Richie, 20.

  271 “Perhaps someone just forgot”: MacArthur, 383. Actually MacArthur’s presence, in addition to being awkward, would have been inappropriate. The peace delegates were national representatives. MacArthur, even if he had continued to be supreme commander, would have had no proper role. Not even General Ridgway was invited.

  271 Rusk warning to Sebald: Sebald, 221–22.

  271 “It is the orders you disobey”: Karnow, 260; Pearlman, Truman and MacArthur, 3.

  271 “Wars are over, White”: Theodore White, “Episode in Tokyo Bay,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1970, 55.

  272 “He could be magnificently right”: Ibid.

  272 “Show me a hero”: Fitzgerald, 122.

  272 “The most radical”: Reischauer, 229.

  272 “Could I have but”: Pratt, 28.

  273 “U.S. inhibitions”: Soffer, 118.

  273 “With the President’s knowledge”: Van Aduard, 184.

  274 “I was born when”: Military Situation, 91.

  275 “What has brought about”: Ibid., 325.

  275 “whether or not . . . No . . . In relation to”: Ibid., 341.

  275 He did not violate . . . And that . . . and created”: Ibid., 417.

  275 “the wrong war, in the wrong place”: Ibid., 732.

  275 “to stop the spread”: Hanson Baldwin, review of MacArthur by Courtney Whitney, New York Times Book Review, January 22, 1956, 24.

  275 legacy of the Korean War: While the Korean War did not result in the decisive victory MacArthur sought, it can be argued that the Korean War was probably America’s most successful war. In my previous book, American History Revised, I put it this way: “It may seem ironical to call the Korean War—‘the forgotten war’—America’s most successful military endeavor, but it achieved its objectives and had the most satisfying long-term results. The purpose of waging war is not just to win battles, but also to secure a political peace. . . . In terms of achieving a stable, long-lasting peace, the Korean War was remarkably fruitful. The country we saved, South Korea, eventually went on to become one of the world’s strongest democracies. For more than a half-century, both the U.S. and the Soviets/Chinese have respected the thirty-eighth parallel that physically separates the two countries. Even more significant, both sides refrained from using nuclear weapons or launching massive invasions of a million men, which they easily could have done. By their conduct of the war, all parties—Americans, Koreans, Chinese, and Russians—signaled “limits” to each other. In so doing, they initiated the era of limited war that has characterized warfare to this day” (294).

  25: A MAN DEEPLY FLAWED: HOW DID HE DO IT?

  276 MacArthur autograph letter: Author’s collection.

  276 Nixon: Harries, xxviii.

  276 extreme leaders: For this concept of extreme leaders and how they will take high risks offering exceptionally high rewards, see Mukunda, 14.

  277 “so prone to exaggerate”: Diary entry of December 27, 1944, Stimson Papers, Yale University.

  277 “The people”: Tracy, 33.

  278 “I don’t care”: Sheldon, 26.

  278 “Listen, Jeannie”: Weintraub, 7.

  278 “Whatever else”: Beech, 58.

  278 “Bob, those were”: Eichelberger, Dear Miss Em, 65.

  278 “Do you realize”: Ibid.

  279 “MacArthur stands out”: Diary entry of March 30, 1945, Stimson Papers, Yale University.

  279 “the Knights of MacArthur’s Round Table”: S. J. Morris, 430.

  279 Eisenhower and Eichelberger on MacArthur: Diary entries of July 1 and 30, Aug. 2, Sept. 18, 19, and 20, 1948, and multiple entries, Feb.–March 1949, Eichelberger Papers, Duke University.

  279 Macmahon Ball: Wildes, 28.

  279 Bradley teasing Eichelberger: Schaller, 155.

  280 “Once you’ve got Baghdad”: George Will, “Inoculated for Exuberance?,” Washington Post, November 10, 2006, A31.

  280 “the greatest reformation”: Gunther, xiii.

  281 “In my own view”: Ball, 179.

  281 “no need of adopting”: Brines, 241.

  281 “The minute I left Japan”: MacArthur, Reminiscences, 147.

  281 red light turned to green: Daws, 347.

  281 “The overpowering need”: Rovere and Schlesinger, 95.

  281 “neither a soft peace”: Fortune, January 1946.

  282 “MacArthur Tenets”: Ganoe, 170–71.

  282 “Bob, if you get”: Eichelberger, 223.

  283 “To take up”: Ganoe, 48.

  284 “a commanding officer”: Considine, 45.

  284 “knew his authority”: Sheldon, 57.

  285 “Rules are mostly made”: Rumsfeld, xiv.

  285 “Most organizations”: John Kotter, “What Leaders Really Do,” Harvard Business Review, vol. 68, no. 3 (May–June 1990),103.

  285 Dulles “I never had greater admiration”: Rep. Walter H. Judd oral interview, 95, Harry S. Truman Library, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/judd.htm.

  285 “that calm courage”: Wavell, 18.

  286 “He was most impressive”: Wolfe, 115, 127.

  286 “I just give ’em”: Bowers, 93.

  286 awarding the Distinguished Service Cross to a young major: Taylor and Rosenbach, 144–45.

  286 “This is the best officer”: Frank, MacArthur, 21.

  288 “the gift of command”: Choate, 35.

  289 “General MacArthur’s headquarters”: Yoshida, 143.

  291 “was indeed”: Weintraub, 191.


  291 “I believed every word”: Ibid.

  291 “He died unquestioning”: Considine, 98.

  291 “Kill Japs”: Nye, 83; Harries, 280.

  292 “One reason”: Kawai, 446; Williams and Wallace, 118.

  26: AFTERMATH

  293 “surrounded by his enemies”: Perry, 69.

  294 Japan’s Education Ministry: Ginn, 244–45.

  295 “In August 1945”: Harries, 267.

  297 “stunned . . . enormously impressed”: O’Donnell and Powers, 15, in Schlesinger, 339.

  297 John Foster Dulles: Ghani and Lockhart, 227.

  298 “The best way”: Redford, 33.

  298 1990 country economy statistics: Harvey, 455.

  298 world’s largest creditor: Economist Pocket World, 13, 24, 30, 76, 91.

  Works Cited

  The sources quoted in this book are voluminous. For readers who wish to pursue further, in boldface are those books and articles I found particularly insightful and stimulating.

  Acheson, Dean. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department. W. W. Norton, 1969.

  Aldous, Christopher. The Police in Occupied Japan: Control, Corruption, and Resistance to Reform. Routledge (UK), 1997.

  Allison, John M. Ambassador from the Prairie or Allison Wonderland. Houghton Mifflin, 1973.

  Appleman, Roy E. Disaster in Korea: The Chinese Confront MacArthur. Texas A&M University Press, 1989.

  Archer, Jules. Frontline General. Julian Messner, 1963.

  Bailey, Paul J. Postwar Japan: 1945 to the Present. Blackwell (UK), 1996.

  Baldwin, Hanson W. Great Mistakes of the War, Harper & Bros., 1949.

  Ball, W. Macmahon. Japan: Enemy or Ally? Cassell (Australia), 1949.

  Barenblatt, Daniel. A Plague Upon Humanity: The Secret Genocide of Axis Japan’s Germ Warfare Operation. HarperCollins, 2004.

  Barnet, Richard J. The Rockets’ Red Glare: The Presidents and Their People. Simon & Schuster, 1990.

  Barrett, David M. The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy. University Press of Kansas, 2005.

  Beard, Mary R. The Force of Women in Japanese History. Public Affairs Press, 1953.

  Beauchamp, Edward R., ed. Women and Women’s Issues in Post–World War II Japan. Garland Publishing, 1998.

  Beech, Keyes. Tokyo and Points East. Doubleday, 1954.

  Bergamini, David. Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy: How Emperor Hirohito Led Japan into War against the West. William Morrow, 1971.

  Best, Gary Dean. The Life of Herbert Hoover: Keeper of the Torch, 1933–1964. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

  Bilainkin, George. Destination Tokyo: A Famous Correspondent’s Urgent Warning to the West about Tomorrow in Asia. Odhams Books (UK), 1965.

  Bishop, Jim. FDR’s Last Year. William Morrow, 1974.

  Bisson, Thomas A. Prospects for Democracy in Japan. Macmillan, 1949.

  ———. Zaibatsu Dissolution in Japan. University of California Press, 1954.

  Bix, Herbert P. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. HarperCollins, 2001.

  Bowers, Faubion. “The Late Douglas MacArthur, Warts and All.” Esquire, January 1967.

  Brackman, Arnold C. The Other Nuremberg: The Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. William Morrow, 1987.

  Bradley, Omar N., and Clay Blair. A General’s Life. Simon & Schuster, 1983.

  Braw, Monica. The Atomic Bomb Suppressed: American Censorship in Occupied Japan 1945–1949. Liber Intl. (Sweden), 1986.

  Breuer, William B. MacArthur’s Undercover War: Spies, Saboteurs, Guerrillas, and Secret Missions. John Wiley, 1995.

  Brines, Russell. MacArthur’s Japan. J. B. Lippincott, 1948.

  Buell, Thomas B. The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance. Little, Brown, 1974.

  Buhite, Russell D. Douglas MacArthur: Statecraft and Stagecraft in East Asian Policy. Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.

  Buruma, Ian. The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan. Jonathan Cape (UK), 1994.

  Chase, William C. Front-Line General: An Autobiography. Pacesetter Press. 1975.

  Choate, Joseph. Douglas MacArthur as I Knew Him. Privately printed, 1986.

  Christian Deputation to Japan. The Return to Japan: Report of October–November 1945. Friendship Press, 1945.

  Cohen, Theodore. Remaking Japan: The American Occupation as New Deal. Free Press, 1987.

  Considine, Bob. MacArthur the Magnificent. David McKay, 1942.

  Columbia University Occupied Japan Oral History Project. Faubion Bowers, Charles Kades.

  Costello, William. Democracy vs. Feudalism in Postwar Japan. Itagaki Shoten, 1948.

  Cousins, Norman. The Pathology of Power. W. W. Norton, 1987.

  Craig, William. The Fall of Japan. Dial Press, 1967.

  Creemers, Wilhelmus H. M. Shrine Shinto After World War II. E. J. Brill (Leiden, Netherlands), 1968.

  Dahlberg, William N. A Tool for Diplomacy: Baseball in Occupied Japan 1945–1952 (a slide-show presentation to the 2010 Annual Convention of Baseball Statisticians, August 6, 2010, Atlanta, GA).

  Dawidoff, Nicholas. The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg. Pantheon, 1994.

  Daws, Gavan. Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. William Morrow, 1994.

  Deverall, Richard L.-G. The Great Seduction: Red China’s Drive to Bring Free Japan behind the Iron Curtain. Intl. Literature Printing Co. (Japan), 1953.

  Documents Concerning the Allied Occupation and Control of Japan. Section of Special Records, Foreign Office, Japanese Government. 6 vols. Tokyo, 1951.

  Dower, John W. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. W. W. Norton, 2000.

  ———. Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World. The New Press, 2012.

  Drape, Joe. Soldiers First: Duty, Honor, Country, and Football at West Point. Times Books, 2012.

  Drea, Edward, ed. Researching Japanese War Crimes Records: Introductory Essays. Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, Penny Hill Press (Congressional Research Service), 2006.

  Duffy, Bernard K., and Ronald H. Carpenter. Douglas MacArthur: Warrior as Wordsmith. Greenwood Press, 1997.

  Dulles, John Foster. English Language Coverage of the Visit of the Dulles Mission to Japan (bound collection of press articles, Tokyo, 1951); Dulles’ personal copy, New York Public Library.

  Economist Pocket World in Figures. The Economist and Profile Books, 2013.

  Eichelberger, Robert L. Papers. Duke University.

  ———. Dear Miss Em: General Eichelberger’s War in the Pacific, 1942–1945. Edited by Jay Luvaas. Greenwood Press, 1972.

  ———. Our Jungle Road to Tokyo. Viking, 1950.

  Emmerson, John K. The Japanese Thread: A Life in the U.S. Foreign Service. Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1978.

  Evans, Stanton, and Herbert Romerstein. Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government. Threshold, 2012.

  Fearey, Robert A. The Occupation of Japan, Second Phase: 1948–1950. Macmillan, 1950.

  Felton, Mark. The Devil’s Doctors: Japanese Human Experiments on Allied Prisoners of War. Pen & Sword (UK), 2012.

  Finn, Richard B. Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida and Postwar Japan. University of California Press, 1995.

  Fitts, Robert. Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game. Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.

  Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Crack-Up, With Other Uncollected Pieces, Note-Books and Unpublished Letters. Edited by Edmund Wilson. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931. Reprint, New Directions, 1956.

  Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1948, 1949. U.S. Department of State, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976.

  Frank, Richard B. Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. Random House, 1999.

  Frank, Richard B. MacArthur. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

  Freidel, Frank. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Launching the New Deal. Little, Brown, 1973.

/>   Gaddis, John Lewis. George F. Kennan: An American Life. Penguin, 2011.

  Gallicchio, Marc, ed. The Unpredictability of the Past: Memories of the Asia-Pacific War in U.S.–East Asia Relations. Duke University Press, 2007.

  Gallup, George H. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935–1948. 2 vols. Random House, 1972.

  Ganoe, William A. MacArthur Close-Up: Much Then and Some Now. Vantage Press, 1962.

  Gauntlett, John Owen, and Robert King Hall. Kokutai no Hongi, Cardinal Principles of the National Entity of Japan. Harvard University Press, 1949.

  Gayn, Mark. Japan Diary. William Sloane Assoc., 1948.

  Ginn, John L. Sugamo Prison: An Account of the Trial and Sentencing of Japanese War Criminals in 1948, by a U.S. Participant. McFarland, 2011.

  Gold, Hal. Unit 731 Testimony: Japan’s Wartime Human Experimentation Program. Charles F. Tuttle, 1966.

  Goodman, Grant K. America’s Japan: The First Year 1945–1946. Fordham University Press, 2005.

  Gordon, Beate Sirota. The Only Woman in the Room. Kodansha Intl., 1997.

  Graves, William. “Human Treasures of Japan.” National Geographic 142 (3) (September 1972), 370–79.

  Grew, Joseph C. Ten Years in Japan. Simon & Schuster, 1944.

  Gunther, John. The Riddle of MacArthur: Japan, Korea and the Far East. Harper & Bros., 1951.

  Hadley, Eleanor M. “Trust Busting in Japan.” Harvard Business Review 26, no. 4 (July 1948), 425–40.

  ———. Memoir of a Trustbuster: A Lifelong Adventure with Japan. University of Hawaii Press, 2002.

  Haley, John Owen. Antitrust in Germany and Japan: The First Fifty Years, 1947–1998. University of Washington Press, 2001.

  Hall, Robert King. Education for a New Japan. Yale University Press, 1949.

  Halsey, William F., and J. Bryan. Admiral Halsey’s Story. Whittlesey House, 1947.

  Hanson, Victor Davis. “Matthew Ridgway.” In The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost—From Ancient Greece to Iraq, edited by Victor Davis Hanson. Bloomsbury Press, 2013.

  Harries, Meirion, and Susie Harries. Sheathing the Sword: The Demilitarization of Japan. Macmillan, 1987.

  Harris, Robert, and Jeremy Paxman. A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Gas and Germ Warfare. Chatto & Windus (UK), 1982.