Supreme Commander

by Seymour Morris, Jr.

  The most powerful man after Whitney was Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby, in charge of intelligence, surveillance, and suppression of subversive activities. He was MacArthur’s “lovable fascist,” otherwise known as “Baron von Willoughby.” He was not a baron, but he was pretty close to it, a modern-day version of Baron von Steuben (George Washington’s Prussian military advisor). He had been born in Germany as Adolf Karl von Tscheppe-Weidenbach, and allegedly attended the University of Heidelberg and the Sorbonne before immigrating to the United States at age eighteen. Adopting his American mother’s maiden name, he graduated from the University of Kansas, then enlisted in the U.S. Army. The author of a 1939 book, Maneuver in War, a magisterial four-hundred-page study of 140 battles, he was the occupation’s resident intellectual, a man as well-read as MacArthur. At a time when most Americans thought of Stalin as “Uncle Joe” and the USSR as an ally, he stood out for his strong concerns about Communism. His intelligence operation would have its hands full. Its major areas of interest were military weapons, the imperial household, POWs and escapees, chemical and biological warfare, labor organizations, Communist groups and, of course, Soviet spies. He also managed to bring a degree of risqué to the SCAP organization. A bachelor, he was was strikingly good-looking and a magnet for the ladies (though he managed to keep himself out of trouble). Clare Boothe Luce, wife of Henry Luce, the head of Time-Life, worked as a roving journalist and visited the Philippines on two occasions and was immediately smitten with Willoughby. No shrinking violet herself, she found Willoughby to be the sexiest man she ever met, a man who, she said, “made her weak at the knees.”

  An equally interesting character was the number-four man, Brig. Gen. William Marquat. A professional boxer and newspaper reporter, he had volunteered for the army in World War I and risen through the ranks as an antiaircraft artillery officer. When a business executive slotted for the position of economics chief got blackballed by Washington, MacArthur jumped to fill the position quickly and appointed his friend Marquat, though he had no industry or banking background. It was an enormous job, responsible for supervising industry, banks, and labor—three different ministries of the government. What was expected to be a temporary assignment turned out to be a lot more: a permanent one, as Marquat, an energetic worker and a quick study, proved more than capable of handling the job. He also made himself Japan’s baseball commissioner—the game was his true passion. Whenever he could get out of a SCAP meeting, he would head out to the ballpark.

  Responsible for military security was Lt. Gen. Robert Eichelberger, whose position does not appear on the organization chart because he was head of the Eighth Army, an organization outside SCAP that also reported to the supreme commander.* He was beloved by everyone, a big teddy bear, genial, honest, uncomplicated, approachable, “as easy, as they say admiringly in the South, as an old shoe.” Like MacArthur, he was a former superintendent of West Point and a war hero, having won the pivotal Battle of Buna in the Philippines. Hard-nosed and direct like many generals, he described the Japanese delegation that came to Manila to discuss surrender as a bunch of “goggle-eyed little black-toothed birds.” Having served in Siberia in 1918–20 and worked with the Japanese militarists, he had acquired an appreciation of Japanese history. Remembering the surprise attack on Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War, the Mukden and Peking incidents, and the treacherous attack on Vladivostok, which he had personally witnessed in 1920, he was leery of the Japanese and didn’t trust them one bit. At a banquet in New York three days before Pearl Harbor, he had given a speech predicting that Japan would attack the United States “within a few days.” He was the only man in America to make this prediction.

  He was to appear on the cover of Time magazine and be courted by Eisenhower to be his deputy in Washington—not a good way to stay in MacArthur’s favor. Though he turned down the offer at MacArthur’s insistence (thus blowing an excellent chance to become Eisenhower’s successor as army chief of staff), he and MacArthur never had the close relationship they had before.

  Not all MacArthur’s key men were members of the Bataan gang. One surprising addition was a China expert from the State Department, George Atcheson, chosen by Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson because he was unfamiliar with Japan and would bring a fresh perspective. MacArthur was wary of State Department people because many of them favored the Communists in China. Upon meeting Atcheson, he showed him a letter alleging that Atcheson was “a pink.” “I just wanted you to see this so we can start off on a fair and square basis,” he told Atcheson. “The cards are now face up on the table.” He assured Atcheson that he would hold nothing against him, he would make up his own mind, and everything depended on his job performance.

  Atcheson went on to become one of MacArthur’s most trusted advisors, including serving as MacArthur’s surrogate at ACJ meetings. Unfortunately Atcheson was killed in a 1947 plane crash in the Pacific, when the plane—in a tragedy reminiscent of Amelia Earhart’s—missed its assigned refueling island (a tiny dot in the ocean) and ran out of fuel just short of Hawaii.

  Another recruit who turned out to be a positive surprise was Maj. Gen. Ned Almond, director of personnel, sent to Japan from Europe. A protégé of George Marshall, after several months he came to admire MacArthur even more than Marshall and was eventually promoted to be MacArthur’s chief of staff and one of his two top generals in the Korean War.

  His team in place and the organizational structure defined, the supreme commander swung into action.

  10

  Occupier as Humanitarian

  IN THE SPIRIT of FDR’s famous “Hundred Days,” MacArthur launched an avalanche of initiatives and activities that left the Japanese astounded; they had never seen a man move so fast (a trait their generals in the South Pacific knew only too well). The supreme commander later called it his Two Hundred Days, not because he wanted to make a grandiose statement—though that was never far from his mind—but because by the time six months had passed, so much had been accomplished. Of the five years (1945–50) he devoted himself full-time to Japan, the first two hundred days were the most important.

  FDR, a liberal Democrat, had viewed MacArthur as a conservative Republican, “one of the two most dangerous men in America” (even though, after saying it in 1932, he kept MacArthur on board and even promoted him). Yet what MacArthur did in Japan was almost like following a script written by the late president: Take over a dazed nation and overwhelm the opposition with countless directives and regulations in pursuit of progressive change. He would be an activist leader, going far beyond the normal parameters of his job. He would be a successful Herbert Hoover. Like Hoover, he would bring to the job an incredible résumé as a skilled administrator; unlike Hoover, however, he would be flexible and willing to try new measures when current efforts were not working or conditions changed. “Above all,” FDR had famously said, “do something.” Eventually something would work. The supreme commander followed that precept.

  Though the U.S. Army had plenty of experience managing occupations, most of it was useless. The standard military government manuals, observed one officer, essentially said, “Bury the dead horses. Appoint somebody as police chief and somebody as mayor, and try to get a good health officer, then you’re on your own!” The occupation of Japan had a lot more work to do than just bury dead horses. So much needed to be done right away: Free the American prisoners, demilitarize the country, and bring in food and medical supplies. “Political parties, elections, democracy, the Emperor: all are of academic importance when the rice bowl is empty,” said State Department adviser John Emmerson to Secretary of State Byrnes. People in the cities of Japan were starving, living on just 800 calories a day—less than half the normal amount required to be healthy. They were desperate. Impromptu mobs formed on the street. The occupation had to act quickly.

  The occupation also had to contend with moving a staggering number of people. It had to bring back from overseas 2.5 million Japanese troops and 2 million Japanese civilians. In the
opposite direction it had to return 1.6 million people to Korea and Formosa, most of whom had been forcibly brought to Japan as slave labor to work in the coal mines and steel factories. The war was over; everyone wanted to get home. These people were spread out all over the map, some as far as five thousand miles away. They had to be tracked down, properly identified and processed, and put on ships for the correct destinations. There were not enough ships. By confiscating Japanese warships and merchant ships, and using spare parts and scrap iron from beached and sunken Japanese ships, the occupation was able to repair and put into commission an impromptu fleet of 167 ships capable of carrying 87,600 people—50 percent of the time. Run the numbers: If we assume a fleet of two hundred ships, five hundred people per shipload, and twenty days to load/transport/unload (including 50 percent downtime), such a fleet can move five thousand people a day—or 5.5 million in three years (assuming everyone has been rounded up and cleared for departure when the ship is ready). By adding whatever additional ships it could get from the merchant marine, plus a fleet of a hundred Liberty ships from the United States, SCAP accomplished 90 percent of this transport in one year—without a single ship lost. The boasted logistics of D-Day were child’s play compared with this. Eisenhower had to transport 73,000 American troops across the English Channel; in Japan, MacArthur had to transport almost fifty times as many people—and over much greater distances. Plus almost none of these people spoke any English, thereby creating numerous delays and complications.

  There was another very urgent problem: disease control. There is no faster way to spread a disease and start a contagion than put people into the confines of a ship. By the time the boat lands, everyone is ill, many dead. In processing people for transport, occupation health officials first had to screen and inoculate passengers for a host of deadly diseases, and where necessary, put sick people into special medical facilities arranged on the spur of the moment.

  In managing this postwar chaos, the American occupation team was well prepared: It had a mission, a plan, an organization, and a strong leader. It also had an advantage very unusual for a country in the throes of a total war defeat: a fully functioning local government. The atom bombs had hit so abruptly that the government had no time to fall apart . . . the best way to help it get back on its feet would be to give it something productive to do. MacArthur delegated to the Japanese government the responsibility for the management of these 6.1 million repatriates coming and going. At major ports, under the direction of SCAP, the Japanese government set up repatriation centers to meet exacting security and health standards. Each person was subject to physical examinations, inoculations and vaccinations, screening of baggage for smuggled goods and precious metals, and identification to ensure he or she was not a war criminal.

  MacArthur also delegated to the Japanese government the most sensitive assignment of all: disarming the country’s 2.2 million troops at home, all trained, armed, and dangerous. Whereas the New York Times back home ran headlines screaming about how “Japan’s Fanatics Are MacArthur’s Number One Problem,” the supreme commander preferred a more measured approach. His gesture permitting self-disarmament astonished and gratified the Japanese military leaders. Expecting humiliation, they got none. They ended up doing their job so well that by mid-October, in less than two months, MacArthur could announce that they had abolished the armed forces and several million men had surrendered their arms. In addition, over the next six months, the Japanese and Americans working together located and destroyed 10,000 airplanes, 3,000 tanks, 90,000 fieldpieces, three million small arms, and one million tons of explosives; plus all the “eggs” in the harbors (mines laid by American B-29s as part of the economic blockade). That wasn’t all. In a country armed to the teeth in preparation for invasion, millions of weapons had been stashed away in remote, hard-to-find places. Tracking down and cleaning up the arsenals, ammunition dumps, and ordnance depots, joint inspection teams stumbled on 100,000 tons of highly sophisticated chemical warfare supplies (a precursor to today’s “weapons of mass destruction”). From civilians they confiscated 120,000 bayonets, 81,000 rifles and carbines, 2,240 automatic weapons, and hundreds of tons of makeshift weapons such as crossbows, body armor, plumbing-pipe guns, bamboo bazookas, explosive arrows, even baseball bats. The baseball bats were returned. MacArthur, a left fielder on West Point’s varsity baseball team, seized this rare opportunity to promote a common love of both countries. Baseball, introduced to Japan by an American schoolteacher in 1872, had become Japan’s national pastime. The supreme commander ordered the resumption of professional baseball games. On a more basic level, General Marquat placed an order with an undoubtedly puzzled War Department in Washington for thousands of baseballs and baseball mitts for Japanese kids playing “stickball.” American GIs, usually acting on their own, undertook to teach young boys the finer points of the game.

  Airport runways, where feasible, were torn up and turned into fields for growing food. Anything relating to aviation was forbidden. In their zeal to eliminate any kind of military weapon, SCAP personnel drafted rules that were often excessively vague and broad in scope. The Japanese were not allowed to own aeronautical equipment of any kind; even the millions of toy airplanes enjoyed by children were forbidden. MacArthur eliminated this silly rule. Because he had to approve all important decisions, much of his time was spent resolving bureaucratic snafus. Like the one about corn bread. A group of home-economics experts had arrived from the United States to advise the Japanese on how to make corn bread with eggs, milk, and butter. The only problem was there were no eggs, milk, or butter in postwar Japan. MacArthur sent the consultants home, thank you very much.

  MacArthur didn’t need teachers, he needed food. The situation grew more and more critical by the day: “You cannot teach democracy to a hungry people,” he scowled. There was no threat of revolution—the Japanese were too war weary for that, plus revolutions don’t take place when things are at their worst, as MacArthur knew from reading about the American, French, and Russian revolutions; they occur when circumstances are getting better and there is a formation of a middle class. This was not happening in Japan. Still there was danger: people in the cities were starving. Every day saw trains packed with people carrying family heirlooms out to the countryside to barter for food from the farmers.

  As bad luck would have it, 1945 was a year of worldwide food shortages. Washington’s first priority was delivering food to Germany. MacArthur sent urgent cables: “Thirty million people are threatened by starvation. Disease and unrest will endanger the work of the Occupation.” For him the issue was one of fundamental ethics: At a time when the Americans were arresting and planning to execute Japanese generals for their brutality to American prisoners in the infamous Bataan March in the Philippines, namely “ill-treatment including starvation,” here the situation was reversed. Every day people were dropping dead in the street. He must act: Not under his watch should a single person die by starvation if it could possibly be helped. His cables to Washington went unanswered, but after several weeks of being badgered, Washington finally got around to sending an International Investigation Commission to Japan to study the problem. MacArthur went into an apoplectic rage: He didn’t need a study team, he needed food! Fortunately former president Herbert Hoover—who probably knew more about famines than anyone else in America, from his post–World War I relief work in Europe—was in the Far East in his capacity as chairman of the American Famine Emergency Committee. MacArthur got him to come to Japan and quickly survey the situation. Hoover concluded that if Japan didn’t get food imports right away, it would fall down to subsistence level “comparable to a Buchenwald concentration camp.” By mid-1946 the grain ships started arriving, delivering $100 million a year of food supplies. It would take another two years for the situation to get back to normal, where people’s daily intake was enough to live on, albeit only barely. The amount of grain delivered by the United States was 3.5 million tons, which at eighty million people works out to be almost
ninety pounds per person.

  Thousands were also dying every day from disease. Under the vigorous leadership of Gen. Crawford Sams, SCAP’s Public Health and Welfare Section carried out widespread inoculation programs to stop the spread of diphtheria, smallpox, typhus, typhoid, meningitis, scarlet fever, dysentery, and cholera. The entire Japanese population participated. The results were instantaneous and dramatic. No relief effort anywhere in the world has matched this achievement:

  LIFE EXPECTANCY UNDER THE OCCUPATION

  (NUMBER OF YEARS, EXCLUDING WAR DEATHS)

  The number one killer in Japan was tuberculosis: In 1945 it killed a greater number of people than all those who died from the bombing, the fire raids, and the two atom bombs put together. Thanks to Sams’ doctors and imports of sophisticated American vaccines, by 1950 the number of tuberculosis fatalities was down to 146 deaths per 100,000 population. During 1946–48, dysentery was reduced by 87 percent, typhus by 86 percent, and diphtheria by 85 percent. The most astounding success was with smallpox. After the appearance of 17,800 cases in 1946, the entire population of 80 million was vaccinated. In 1948 only 29 cases of smallpox appeared.

  Most histories of the occupation focus on the political aspects of MacArthur’s reign, ignoring the humanitarian one. Yet it was there that MacArthur made his greatest impact. According to the historian Eiji Takemae, Crawford Sams’ ambitious health-care assistance may have saved as many as three million lives. As for MacArthur’s emergency food program, SCAP estimated that the amount of grain and canned goods imported from the United States was enough to save eleven million people. Any way you figure the total—eight, ten, fourteen million—it is a huge number. In addition, SCAP engaged in preventive health care by providing two hot meals a week to 3.2 million schoolchildren to ensure they had a proper diet.