The Emperor's General

by James Webb

  “What files?” Colonel Genius seemed incredulous. “They claim the war ministry’s records office was hit by firebombs, destroying all the files. They say the navy ministry was burnt out, too. Anything we really need—command chronologies, minutes of key meetings—they’re burnt.”

  “By our firebombs.”

  “That’s what they maintain,” said Colonel Genius cynically. “Very convenient. By our firebombs. Amazingly accurate bombing, with the ministries right across the street from the emperor’s palace, isn’t it? In fact, last May a building on the palace grounds caught fire three hours after one of our fire bombings ended. The fire was started by cinders blown across the street from the war ministry building. The cinders came from—you guessed it, sir—burning military records. And the records they are turning over? I have no way of knowing if they’re accurate. To be frank, they’ve known they were going to lose for some time. Without the minutes of the meetings themselves, any materials that they turn over to us can easily have been changed. So, ironic as it might sound, a diary, cross-referenced with another source, becomes very good evidence.”

  MacArthur rose from his chair and began pacing again. “We should have expected this. It’s one reason why I have been opposed to this form of sweeping damnation from the beginning. What good will it do? How much of our energies will be expended in cat-and-mouse games that cause both sides to lose face?” He glanced at Genius. “How far does this go, Colonel? How much of this does justice require us to do?”

  Colonel Genius flipped through his legal folder. He had completely relaxed. His voice took on an academic tone. “We’re dealing with three different categories of war crimes, General, and our lists are reflecting these distinctions. The first, and as you might imagine the easiest both to deplore and prosecute, are the individual cases. Individual atrocities, if you would. For instance, we have reports of doctors conducting savage and inhumane experiments on our prisoners of war. Deliberately injecting soybean milk and even urine into their veins. Deliberately bleeding to death healthy men in order to capture their plasma. We have reports of Japanese officers in the island campaigns having cooked American airmen and then eaten their organs. I have a report that certain members of the Japanese secret police kept pens of naked Western men and women underneath the torture chambers of Bridge House in Shanghai. These kinds of things.”

  “Yes,” said MacArthur, clearly repulsed. “Those are without question crimes for which individuals should be held accountable. And bringing them to court will provide a valuable education for the Japanese people. Go on.”

  “Yes, sir.” Colonel Genius wiped a hand over his balding pate and frowningly flipped past a few pages. “The second category is a little harder but is of equal concern. It involves accountability for what we might call mass atrocities. Situations where Japanese soldiers went out of control for days or weeks at a time, resulting in the large-scale slaughter of innocents.”

  “Like the rape of Manila,” interjected MacArthur, his face suddenly a map of vivid, angry memories.

  “Exactly, sir,” said the colonel. “And Nanking, which was actually twice as savage as Manila. Over a period of a month, more than two hundred thousand innocents were slaughtered in Nanking. Thousands of women were raped. Babies were hoisted on bayonets. These acts were witnessed by large numbers of westerners who had been living in the city and were then interned by the Japanese. The key question in both Manila and Nanking is the extent to which the commanders must be held accountable for the actions of their subordinates. No matter how much we might condemn the acts themselves, in the law the issue of command responsibility is not a simple matter. If they ordered such actions, we have one standard, which is murder. If they openly or brazenly allowed them, we have another, which is probably reckless homicide. If they were negligent and did not know but should have known, we have a third standard, which is more likely manslaughter. The extent of the killing also affects the gravity of the crimes we prosecute. It will be difficult to sort all this out.”

  “Not for Manila, it won’t,” said MacArthur. “In one sense that is correct,” said Colonel Genius, impervious to the personal vitriol in the supreme commander’s voice. “I must say, from the first day he surrendered, General Yamashita has been cooperating fully in the interrogations, as have the members of his staff. We’re developing a reliable day-by-day account of his command. It seems more difficult to do that for Nanking. As of now we don’t even have a list of the division commanders at Nanking.”

  “Develop a day-by-day account of the sacking of the ancient Christian city of Manila, and the rape of its innocent women and children,” countered MacArthur. A heavy sarcasm was ringing in his voice. “And there will be little left for the supposedly cooperative General Yamashita to add.”

  Genius gave the supreme commander a quick but somewhat startled glance, then returned to his notes. “Yes, sir. We’ll do that.”

  The supreme commander seemed unusually energized, intent on pushing his point. “And there is another distinction with reference to Nanking. We should not lose sight of it.” He had returned to his swivel chair and was grasping the back of it with one hand as he spoke. “These actions took place eight years ago. At that time, World War Two as we came to know it had not yet begun. Two ancient Asian peoples were throwing themselves against each other in a way that westerners might not fully comprehend, but filled with symbolic signals that each Asian side understood full well.”

  Colonel Genius and his two majors looked uncomprehendingly at the supreme commander, then at one another. Finally Genius shrugged, fully mystified. “I’m sorry, General, but I don’t understand the significance of what you’re saying, sir.”

  “Do you know what it means to kill the chicken in order to scare the monkey?”

  Genius paused again, then shook his head. “No, sir.”

  “The Chinese and the Japanese do.” MacArthur walked back to his window, looking again across the rainswept palace grounds. “China is a vast nation, with nearly a billion inhabitants. How does a foreign army conquer it? I am not condoning it, but the Japanese may have been sending a message at Nanking to break the Chinese spirit, not much different in concept than our firebombing of Tokyo. I’m not comparing the two, mind you. Only the concept. But Manila? That was different. Manila was gratuitous and wholly evil.”

  “A message sent by whom, sir? From what level of government? The theater commander? The prime minister? Or perhaps the emperor?” Colonel Genius looked steadily at the General. “Two hundred thousand innocent Chinese were raped, bayoneted, used for target practice, buried alive, and otherwise grotesquely done away with.” Genius spoke quietly, but his livid face betrayed the calmness of his voice. “That’s a pretty big chicken. And in all due respect, General, I would call it wholly evil as well.”

  “We are prosecuting, Colonel Genius!” MacArthur’s flat statement was filled with the full power of his office, and an unspoken warning that his words had better not be used elsewhere as evidence that he was seeking anything other than full accountability. But the exchange had clearly chilled all three lawyers. “Have I said anything to the contrary?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Very well, then.”

  Genius wiped his face with a hand, turning back to the pages inside his file folder. “Yes, sir. We are prosecuting.”

  “Yes,” said MacArthur. “Proceed.”

  “Yes, sir.” Genius referred to his notes. “The third type of war crime we have been charged to investigate is the vaguest while at the same time it is the most far-reaching. Consequently, it is also the most controversial. We are calling these suspects our ‘Class A’ war criminals. The offenses relate to, shall we say, national-level atrocity—prosecuting the war itself. They include categories such as ‘conspiring to wage aggressive war,’ and ‘crimes against peace.’ General Tojo is an example, since he was the wartime prime minister. Another is Field Marshal Sugiyama, obviously. There will be others.”

  The unspoken names of
the “others” hung in the room like a damping cloud. The General turned his head away and stared through his window, out into the rain-drenched mini-forest of the palace grounds. Generals Willoughby and Whitney sat motionless, disciplined to MacArthur’s sudden retreats into contemplative thought. Colonel Genius and his twin majors squirmed on the divan, writing notes and pointing to one another’s legal pads. And I, never having been invited to find a chair, shifted absently from foot to foot as if I were in ranks, standing at parade.

  “We must be extremely careful,” MacArthur finally said, staring out toward the emperor’s inner palace. “I do not wish for you to misunderstand me, Colonel, but all this relates to the past. The day-to-day decisions of high government officials regarding the conduct of a war are not in my view criminal acts. I know what the Potsdam Declarations say, but we cannot live in a world of small-minded recrimination. I’m dealing with the future every day. The future, do you understand? I am working to secure the well-being and security of a region that holds more than half the world’s people.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Colonel Genius. “I do understand.”

  A silence followed. Colonel Genius rose from the divan, joined by his two assistants. He closed his folder. General MacArthur had turned away from him, as if he were no longer present. Then I saw something flash in the colonel’s eyes, a quick, unvanquished pulsing that seems to be intrinsic in so many lawyers that I can only surmise that the very study of American and British justice permanently embeds it, no matter how powerful their opponent, no matter how intimidating the instructions of their superiors. Colonel Genius understood. And the flashing of his eyes was telling me that, in the colonel’s mind, perhaps MacArthur was the one who did not.

  “But what if some of these ‘Class A’ suspects directly ordered the army to kill the chicken in order to scare the monkey? What do we call that, General MacArthur?”

  MacArthur turned quickly around to face the colonel again, his movement itself an imposing warning. The colonel smiled, raising both his hands and his eyebrows as if there were nothing further he could do.

  “So,” said Genius, as if himself closing the meeting, “I thank you for your time, General, and we will continue to carry out our instructions here. We have twenty-three suspects already approved for arrest, most of whom are in the first category I mentioned. Now that you’ve approved the”—he referred to his notes, and chose the word carefully—“coordination of the arrests with the Japanese Cabinet, we’ll get right on the new policy.”

  Genius took a deep breath. I could tell from the brightness in his eyes and the near smile he was suppressing that he was enjoying this little moment. “As for the rest of it, I don’t know for certain how many more Japanese officials will be on this ‘Class A’ list, or whether it will include the emperor, but I’ll keep you fully posted.”

  “It will not include the emperor!” MacArthur’s voice roared as he spoke. “And you will consult with me before you publish any list. Do you understand me, Colonel?”

  “I take it that this is a direct order, sir?” Colonel Genius asked calmly, holding MacArthur’s stare.

  “Beyond question. You are not empowered to make international policy, Colonel.”

  “No, sir,” said Colonel Genius. “But I am obligated to carry out my duties as a member of the bar.”

  “Your obligations are to carry out your duties as a member of my staff.”

  “This is a very complicated situation, sir,” answered Genius, yielding nothing to the General. “But I am of necessity wearing two hats here. I can assure you that as I fulfill my ethical responsibilities as a lawyer, I will also carry out your orders and consult with you when I go forward.”

  MacArthur watched imperiously as I shuffled the lawyers out of his office. I knew that once I closed the door behind me the supreme commander would fly into a livid fit. But what I was not prepared for was the equally angry reaction of Colonel Sam Genius.

  The dumpy lawyer took my arm as we stood in the darkened corridor, leaving his assistants in the hallway and pulling me into my small cubicle of an office so that we would not be overheard. Then he put a finger into my chest.

  “What the hell was that all about, Captain? I’m trying to do my job, here. Don’t tell me I’ve got to fight MacArthur as well as the Japanese.”

  I suppressed a smile, for I had come to admire the colonel’s feisty style. “I think what he was saying, Colonel, is that if we charge the emperor with war crimes the entire country is going to come at us with pitchforks and kitchen knives and cut us up into little bitty pieces and throw us into the sea.”

  “Oh, that,” joked Genius, grinning cynically. “And I suppose that’s going to slow us down in Germany, too?”

  “This is a different system. It’s been in place, in one form or another, for thousands of years. There was no cabal at the top directing all the evil. Everything the Japanese did was worked out in a form of national consensus. The whole nation did it.”

  Genius shook his head in amazement. “Boy, they’ve gotten to you, too, haven’t they? Look, I don’t need an anthropologist here, OK? I’ll tell you the real difference. It’s not that complicated. We don’t have anybody—anybody—who is good enough at Japanese to break apart all the codes in these diaries and other documents. Not to mention that we don’t have very many documents. That’s it. I think they’re just smarter than the Germans.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But if so, the reality is that you’re going to have to live with it, sir. Because the supreme commander is the only guy who can decide on prosecution.”

  Genius watched me unflinchingly, and I knew that MacArthur was facing yet another determined and capable adversary. Except in this case his opponent was supposed to be under his command. “I have my weapons, as do the other Allies,” said Genius. “We’re not working in a vacuum here. He doesn’t want to be embarrassed, does he? Or accused of betrayal?” He snorted with disgust. “I can’t believe he tried to minimize the Nanking atrocities!”

  I casually checked the hallway, to be sure we were not being overheard. “Can I give you a piece of advice, Colonel?”

  He grinned mischievously. “The General’s flunky wishes to speak.”

  “Only in confidence.”

  “Fine,” said Genius. “He’s not only a flunky, he’s a coward.”

  “I like my job.”

  “An understandable hesitation. And I, sir, am a suborner, anyway, fully used to informants. So you are now a client, fully protected by ancient precepts of legal ethics.”

  “Now, there’s a scary thought.” We both chuckled, having reached a point of amicable understanding. “First,” I continued, “don’t go directly after the emperor. It only sets MacArthur off. You might not like it, but that’s not going to change.”

  Genius raised his eyebrows sarcastically. “Is there a ‘second’?”

  I grinned. “Yes, sir. A very interesting second. Second, if you’re looking for diaries, why don’t you confiscate the lord privy seal’s?”

  “Who’s that?” Genius was so lit up that he seemed to glow.

  “Marquis Koichi Kido,” I answered in a near whisper. “He’s been the closest adviser to the emperor for years. If the others kept diaries, you can be sure he has, too. He was in on every single decision of the war.”

  “Right next to the emperor?”

  “At his very elbow, Colonel. Forever.”

  “The lord privy seal, huh? I’ll put my people on that.”

  Genius slapped me on the shoulder, then waved good-bye. “See you around the campus, Captain. And I take back what I said about the ‘flunky’ thing.”

  “That’s perfectly OK, sir,” I protested, grinning a good-bye. “I’m just the General’s monkey boy.”

  As he left I congratulated myself. Manipulating world affairs was turning out to be great fun.

  Over the next five days the remaining twenty-three war criminal suspects on Colonel Genius’s initial list turned themselves in, and were delivere
d alive and well by the Japanese police. Prince Higashikuni, still hanging on as prime minister until the emperor decided it was time for Japan, in Lord Privy Seal Kido’s words, to “move into the future,” provoked an outrage back in the States when during an interview he opined, “People of America, won’t you forget Pearl Harbor? We Japanese are ready to forget the devastation brought on by the atomic bomb!” The emperor’s uncle claimed that Japan had already been prosecuting its war criminals but could not come up with even one example when asked by the interviewer. Hanson Baldwin of the New York Times, arguably the most influential military commentator in the country, angrily accused MacArthur of “accepting the emperor as a sort of junior partner in the occupation.” And on September 20 Senator Richard Russell of Georgia asked the U.S. Senate to resolve that the emperor be tried as a war criminal along with former prime minister Tojo.

  But that was just high-level noise. The greatest news was that Colonel Sam Genius had listened to my quiet advice. On September 23 a group of MPs and lawyers showed up at the lord privy seal’s home and seized his diaries. And two days after that Kido called, reminding me of his earlier invitation, and asked if I might like to join him for dinner at his favorite restaurant. The next evening, with the concurrence of General Court Whitney, I set off to dine with Koichi Kido.

  And, of course, to listen.

  CHAPTER 12

  I strode young and easy along the jammed, dusty streets of downtown Tokyo. Low masonry buildings hugged the street, mixed among endless pine shanties and a sea of rubble from the Allied bombings. The main roads that once marked Tokyo’s origins as a fort had all but vanished years before, inside a maze of smaller streets and even narrower alleyways. Telegraph and electric wires criss-crossed like dark Jacob’s ladders just above my head.

  It was warm and windy, like Indian summer. Night was coming. Beyond the pink nimbus that blanketed the city I could see the moon’s half-empty crescent lingering low and beautiful above the southern skyline. I walked amid an unending stream of dusty, mask-faced people. They were dressed in dull-colored kimonos, army uniforms, and bundles of rags. Dust, that was Tokyo in 1945 when the rain stopped and the sun came out. It was in their hair. It was on their clothes. It caked their nostrils and coated their lungs. They looked straight ahead and down, as if careful to respect one another’s privacy. I had come to marvel at their acute sense of order as they walked. So accustomed were they to the close quarters of their overpopulated city that it was rare in all this bustle when two bodies so much as touched.