Supreme Commander
Page 42
Takemae, Eiji, 107, 295
taxes, 241–42
Taylor, Zachary, 162n
Teikoko Bank poisoning, 191–93
Tench, Charles, 18, 49
Tennesee Valley Authority, 184
Tenth Corps, 273
Thailand, 266
Thompson, Arvo, 189
Thorpe, Elliott, 76–78, 80, 167
Tientsin POW camp, 81
Time, 26, 54, 80, 101, 126, 140n, 278
Togo, Heihachiro, 22
Tojo, Hideki, 72, 82, 194, 207, 209
Tokuda, Kyiuchi, 152
Tokugawa, Ieyasu, 32–33
Tokyo, 36, 50
demonstrations of 1946, 143
firebombing of, 48, 182n, 295
MacArthur’s arrival in, 19, 21, 53–54
Russian embassy in, 166
street signs, 217
suicides in, 31
Tokyo Fire Department, 159–60
Tokyo Rose, 245–46
Tokyo War Crimes Trial, 183, 188–89, 197–200, 206–13. See also International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE); war crimes trials
torture, 187, 190
Tracy, Honor, 147, 277
trade, 126, 222, 242–43, 274, 292, 297–98
Truman, Harry S, 127, 143, 162–63, 185, 234, 295
anti-Communism and, 252
atom bomb and, xv-xvi, 48, 178, 194
biological weapons and, 190, 192, 194
Cold War and, 221, 223, 229
death of MacArthur and, 293
economic policy in Japan and, 236, 238, 242
Hirohito and, 55, 76
Korean War and, 254–55, 259–61
MacArthur appointed SCAP by, xiv, 3–10, 52, 277
MacArthur fired by, 58n, 264–66, 271–75, 285
MacArthur refuses invitation of, to visit U.S., 61–62
MacArthur’s relationship with, 3, 7–9, 70, 278, 287
occupation policy and, 58–61, 94, 238
reparations and, 112, 231
SCAP chain of command and, 92
surrender ceremony and, 34
Wake Island meeting with MacArthur and, 259–60, 290–91
war crimes trials and, 211
West Point and, 6
“Trust Busting in Japan” (Hadley), 234
tuberculosis, as number one killer, 107
Tunney, Gene, 51
“Two Billion Dollar Failure in Japan” (Fortune article), 235, 237–39
Ueno train station, 50
Uji bomb, 187
ultranationalists, 21, 116
Umezu, Yoshijiro, 38, 41–42, 183, 212, 297
Unit 731, 178, 180–81, 183–87, 192–97, 250, 289, 296
United Kingdom, 42, 59, 64, 72, 93, 144, 174. See also Britain
United Nations, 63, 90, 213, 221
Japan’s admission to, 263
Korean War and, 254–55, 259
United Press, xvi, 161, 254
U.S. Army, 5. See also specific military units
black market and, 226
command responsibility and, 200
food supplies and, 50
Korean War and, 257
troop reductions and, 59, 85–86
U.S. Chemical Corps, 193
U.S. Congress, 86, 223–24, 232, 255–56
MacArthur’s address to joint session, 265
MacArthur’s testimony to, 269–71, 274–75
U.S. Constitution, 131, 140, 144, 221
U.S. Goodwill Baseball Tour of Japan, 245–47
U.S. House of Representatives
Appropriations Committee, 173
Armed Services Committee, 261
U.S.-Japan Security Pact (1951), 271
U.S. Navy, 21, 34, 257
U.S. Pacific Fleet, 35
“U.S. Policy Toward a Peace Settlement with Japan” (Kennan), 228
U.S. Senate, 274–75
Foreign Relations Committee, 40
Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program (Truman Committee), 7
U.S. Supreme Court, 201, 203, 204
U.S. War Contracts Board, 236
United States Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan (SWNCC150/4/A, September 6, 1945), 20, 59–60, 89, 92, 146, 231–32, 238n
Vandenberg, Arthur, 40
Vasilevsky, Aleksandr, 165
Veale, F. J. P., 210
Veracruz, occupation of (1914), 4
Versailles Treaty (1919), 17, 254
Vietnam War, 205, 297
Vincent, John Carter, 115
Vining, Elizabeth Gray, 79, 87, 118, 161, 168
Vladivostok, Japanese attack on (1920), 100
Voice of the Crane (emperor’s pronouncements), 23, 25, 180
Voltaire, 285
Wainwright, Jonathan, 34, 42, 201, 204
Wake Island meeting, 259–60, 290–91
Walsh, Edward, 235
Wang, Dr., 233n
war crimes, 60, 106, 139–40, 198
Hirohito and, 82, 132, 177, 206, 209–10
Ishii immunity and, 188–90, 192–93
Kido arrested for, 77
war crimes trials, 73, 75, 183, 188–90, 198–213, 221, 286. See also specific locations and trials
biological weapons and, 183, 188–96
USSR and, 195–96
War Department, U.S., 4, 19, 92, 178–79, 182, 190, 203, 227, 233–34, 245
War Examining Board, 11
Warner, Langdon, 110
Washington, George, 53, 54n, 69, 96, 99, 129, 157, 162n, 204, 278
Webb, Sir William, 198, 208
Wedemeyer, Albert, 236
Weed, Ethel, 148, 150–51
Weed’s Girls, 148
Welles, Orson, 204
West Point (U.S. Military Academy at West Point), 4–6, 13–14, 42, 100, 281
whaling, 64
White, Theodore, 271–72
White, William Allen, 155
Whitney, Courtney, 11, 25, 31, 42, 97–99, 220n, 234–35, 284–85, 291, 293, 295
constitution and, 127–29, 131–38, 145, 147
MacArthur’s relationship with 98–99, 159, 161
Wiley, Alexander, 275
Williams, Justin, 97, 176
Willoughby, Charles, 11, 16, 99, 117, 161, 166, 168, 185, 193, 196, 226, 246, 258, 284, 291, 295
Wolfe, James, 258
Women’s and Minors’ Bureau, 149–51. See also government, Japan
Women’s Army Corps (WAC), 148, 150
Women’s Information Officer, 150
women’s rights, 20, 49, 79, 114, 121, 124, 126, 146–53, 219–20, 228, 284, 288
constitution and, 130–31
equal pay for equal work, 149, 152
marriage and, 147–48, 218
nondiscrimination, 152–53
property, inheritance and divorce and, 146, 151–53
U.S. vs. Japan and, 153
voting and, 141–42, 145, 148–49, 152
World Report (later U.S. News &World Report), 239–40
World War I, 4, 6, 17, 65–66, 100, 183, 271, 281, 283, 286
World War II, 282. See also specific battles and locations
Allied fatalities at hands of Japanese in, 81
biological weapons and, 180–85
Japanese history of, 294–95
MacArthur heads forces in Far East, 5–6, 12–13, 18–19, 32–33
USSR and Pacific War, 18, 165
“X” article (Kennan), 225–27
Yamamoto, Isoroku, 182–83
Yamanashi, Kakunoshin, 119, 121
Yamashita, Tomoyuki, 18, 26, 199, 201–5, 208, 210, 286
Yamato (Japanese battleship), 39
Yasukuni Shrine, 122, 295
Years of MacArthur, The (James), 295
yellow fever, 179
Yokohama, 19, 21
bust of MacArthur in, 265
MacArthur arrives in, 30, 36–37
Yoshida, Shigeru, 132, 137, 142, 144–45, 157, 161, 176, 225, 236, 243, 251, 253, 256, 262, 265, 28
1, 289–90, 293
Yugoslavia, 205
zaibatsu (economic monopolies), 60, 91, 96, 109, 121, 126, 146, 211, 230–42, 238n, 288, 292
hoarded goods scandal and, 239–40
original plan for, 235–36
Photographic Insert
MacArthur, the supreme commander, arriving in Japan, is greeted by his number-two man, General Robert Eichelberger. “Bob,” he says, “this is the payoff!”
MacArthur and his men, none wearing guns. “The most daring act of the entire war,” said Winston Churchill.
Everyone ready, waiting for the supreme commander to step forward and begin the surrender ceremony.
MacArthur (far right) watches Shigemitsu sign the surrender document for Japan.
At the end of the ceremony, there was a deafening roar as planes flew overhead. The surrender was now complete. A new era for Japan had begun.
MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito at their first meeting, the only photograph ever taken of the two men together. The Japanese newspapers suppressed the picture because it made the emperor look inferior. MacArthur ordered them to print it.
The Japanese people gathered every day for a fleeting glimpse of MacArthur leaving his office for lunch.
Heartfelt gratitude for MacArthur’s handling of emergency relief.
Children—the future citizens of Japan—were a high priority for the occupation.
If Douglas MacArthur was to achieve his major objective of eliminating Japanese militarism, then he needed to help women achieve positions of influence and power. Second to the constitution, this was his most successful reform of the entire occupation.
MacArthur was so popular in Japan that the Japanese posted billboards, hoping he might become the U.S. president.
Two brilliant men who changed Japan forever: Courtney Whitney and Charles Kades. They directed the drafting of a new constitution for Japan while overcoming Japanese resistance and keeping their activities secret from Washington. Their handiwork survives today.
MacArthur headquarters at the Dai Ichi Building. No checkpoints or fences were needed.
Under MacArthur, counter to the prevailing practices of the time, women were given a prominent role in the occupation.
Protecting Japan from nearby Russia proved to be MacArthur’s greatest challenge.
MacArthur and John Foster Dulles.
MacArthur with an aide in his office.
“The Nuremberg of the East.” The trial of Japanese war criminals lasted thirty-one months; all twenty-five defendants were found guilty.
John Foster Dulles and William Sebald talking with Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida.
“Sayonara!” As MacArthur leaves Japan, 200,000 people line the streets to say farewell.
About the Author
SEYMOUR MORRIS JR. is the author of American History Revised: 200 Startling Facts That Never Made It into the Textbooks. He is also an international business entrepreneur and the former head of corporate communications for the world’s largest management consulting firm. A resident of New York City, he holds an A.B. and M.B.A. from Harvard University.
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Also by Seymour Morris Jr.
American History Revised
Credits
Cover design by Richard Ljoenes
Cover photograph © AP Photo
Copyright
SUPREME COMMANDER. Copyright © 2014 by Seymour Morris Jr. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
“Assistant Cooks” cartoon: Fred O. Siebel cartoon is reproduced with permission of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
“Japanese thinking” illustration: from Courtney Whitney, MacArthur: His Rendezvous with History, page 252.
MacArthur/Marshall cartoon: 1951 Herblock Cartoon, © The Herb Block foundation.
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* For his honors and medals, see chapter 5. For a critical view of MacArthur as a general, see books by Eric Larrabee (1987) and Thomas Ricks (2012).
* This claim was not as preposterous as it seems. The Japanese people had never before heard the emperor’s voice on the radio. (For most of the American military, used to American radio and FDR’s “fireside chats,” this came as a shock.)
* The only other father-son besides Arthur MacArthur and Douglas MacArthur who have received the Medal of Honor are the son Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and then his father (posthumously).
* MacArthur was unusually solicitous of the lives of his men. He believed in outsmarting the enemy, not bludgeoning the enemy with superior numbers of manpower at the cost of heavy casualties. In this he was the opposite of Grant, who could lose ten thousand men in a battle and not think twice about it. The first thing most commanders do when they start their day is study the latest battlefield reports and where their troops and the enemy’s are configured. Not MacArthur. He would study the latest fatality reports, slowly reading the name of every soldier killed, line by line. It was his way—painful though it might be—of reminding himself of his fundamental responsibility as a general: to protect his men. They all knew this, and respected him for it. To serve under MacArthur was considered a privilege, as good a chance as any they would return home alive.
* In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the death tolls were originally estimated to be 80,000 and 40,000. More recent estimates place the total for the two cities at over 200,000.
* By the time his career was over, five-star general Douglas MacArthur would be the recipient of forty medals and decorations: the Medal of Honor, a Presidential Unit Citation, a UN Service Medal, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army Distinguished Service Medal, the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, the Air Medal, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, a National Defense Service Medal, the Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart, along with thirty-four orders, decorations, and service medals from foreign countries. The changing nature of warfare today from total to limited wars means that there will never be a general so decorated as MacArthur.
He is not, however, the highest-ranking general. That distinction belongs to George Washington, who was posthumously awarded six stars by Congress in 1976, with the understanding that no general may ever outrank him.
* MacArthur r
uled Japan for slightly less than five years (from August 30, 1945, to June 25, 1950). After the Korean War started, his efforts were devoted almost entirely to the war, until he was relieved on April 11, 1951.
* Upon returning to his palace, the emperor asked who that friendly man was who had put out his hand to greet him when he got out of his limousine. He reciprocated by sending Fellers a signed photograph of himself.
* Which is exactly what happened in America’s next major military occupation. In 2003 in Iraq, President Bush abruptly fired Gen. Jay Garner after three weeks and installed the inexperienced, politically connected Paul Bremer as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
* MacArthur had four titles: SCAP, CINCUNC (Commander in Chief, United Nations Command), CINCFE (Commander in Chief, Far East), and CGFEC (Commanding General, Far East Command). He was running the occupation of Japan, the deployment of U.S. troops in Okinawa and Taiwan, the use of Allied troops in Japan and Korea, and the naval and air forces stationed in the Far East.
* In his 1964 memoir MacArthur would continue this fiction of noninvolvement. He wrote that the emperor had issued the rescript renouncing his divinity “without any suggestion or discussion with me.”
* The complexity of the Japanese language was used as a tool by the Japanese government to control the people and keep them in ignorance and abeyance. There are 56,000 kanji ideographs in the classical Japanese language. To read a newspaper, one needs to know 2,400 of them. Yet most Japanese people (primary-school graduates) know only 600. SCAP conducted tests of primary-school children studying phonetic Japanese and found that in just two weeks they reached the same level of literacy as students studying kanji for six years. SCAP’s efforts to promote the use of phonetic Japanese (romaji) were largely unavailing. Observed Time bureau chief Richard Lauterbach: “The Old Guard claimed that the large number of homonyms in the language would lead to ambiguity. And so millions of new textbooks were ordered in the old-style calligraphy. It was a victory for the traditionalists.” Added the educator John Ashmead in a January 1947 issue of the Atlantic Monthly: “We may be able, by using the radio, to democratize Japan to a limited extent. But much of our present effort to re-educate the Japanese is just money down the drain.”