Supreme Commander

by Seymour Morris, Jr.

  That was three months ago. During this time the subcommittee had been working behind closed doors and never once sought SCAP advice. SCAP had informed the cabinet, both orally and in writing, that major reforms needed to be undertaken in areas such as parliamentary supremacy, legislative control of the budget, executive branch answerable to the legislature, and civilian control of the military. When no arguments or questions arose, SCAP assumed its suggestions were being followed. So when Matsumoto finally delivered the cabinet’s draft of a revised constitution, the package was opened with great anticipation.

  MacArthur rarely lost his temper. But on that cold, dreary day in early February 1946, he got very angry. He felt betrayed. For months he had put on the facade that he had taken no part in the deliberations of the Matsumoto Committee, whereas in actual fact he had held several personal conferences with state ministers, as had George Atcheson. And now this! The Japanese were either toying with him or ignoring him. Either way he didn’t like it, especially since this was his major priority of the entire occupation.

  He slammed his hand on the buzzer bell on his desk, the side door opened, and in scurried his ever-available top aide, Courtney Whitney.

  Scanning the document with a legal eye, Whitney was dumbfounded. Here was this important document, and the cabinet had done zilch . . . Not a word to be found about any of the suggested reforms. There was no change in the power of the emperor; he was now “supreme and inviolable” whereas before he had been “sacred and inviolable.” There was no new bill of rights, in fact some of the few rights that already existed had been taken away. Did the Japanese not know that a “suggestion” coming from SCAP was more than a suggestion?

  MacArthur’s problem was not that the Japanese were stalling or playing games—he could force reforms down their throat if he wanted to—his problem was that he was running out of time. Two threats loomed on the horizon: the Far Eastern Commission, due to start its supervisory function at the end of the month, and a general election coming up in April. Either event could undermine MacArthur’s power as the supreme commander and reduce his entire occupation effort to a sideshow. MacArthur, staring at the calendar, knew that if he didn’t control events, events would soon control him.

  He had no choice, he had to go on an all-out offensive. Anticipating he might have to do this, he had already covered himself legally. Even though he was the supreme commander, and President Truman had told him “Your authority is supreme,” could he go so far as change another country’s constitution? This had never been done before, and he was sure the State Department or any of the Allied nations would jump all over him. To protect himself he had requested Whitney, Kades, and three members of SCAP’s legal staff to prepare an official memorandum on the subject. He now had it, a lengthy and cogently reasoned memorandum stating he had “unrestricted authority to take any action you deem proper in effectuating changes in the Japanese constitutional structure—the only possible restriction being upon action taken by you toward removal of the Emperor, in which case you are required to consult with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” And, of course, no leaks to Washington. The less said, the better.

  First thing next morning, Courtney Whitney called all twenty-five members of the Government Section into the conference room for an emergency meeting. “Ladies and gentlemen, today you have been called here as a constituent assembly. General MacArthur has given us orders to do the historic work of drafting a new constitution for the Japanese people.”

  The atmosphere was electric; everyone was stunned. They all knew the Japanese had been working on the constitution, progress was slow, and the supreme commander was known not to be a patient man—but this? Whitney pulled out a memo and started reading. Later dubbed “the MacArthur Note,” the memo contained three principles. One, “The Emperor is the head of state, in accordance with the Constitution and responsible to the basic will of the people.” Two, “War as a sovereign right of the nation is abolished.” Three, “The feudal system of Japan will cease,” meaning there would be no more hereditary rights of title (other than the emperor).

  Then came the shocker: “This draft must be finished by February 12.” Nine days. The Founding Fathers in Philadelphia had taken how long? Three months? The twenty-five people were jubilant and exhilarated: Writing a constitution—What heady stuff! “There are few students of political science,” wrote John Gunther about this effort, “who have not wanted, at one time or another, to draw up a Utopia.” Alas, the exhilaration of Utopia quickly dissipated as Whitney warned them what might be coming after February 12:

  On that date the foreign minister and other Japanese officials are to have an off-the-record meeting about the new constitution. We expect that the version produced by the Japanese government will have a strong right-wing bias. However, if they hope to protect the Emperor and to maintain political power, they have no choice but to accept a constitution with a progressive approach, namely, the fruits of our current efforts. I expect we’ll manage to persuade them. But if it looks as though it might prove impossible, General MacArthur has already authorized both the threat of force and the actual use of force.

  Just as they had a deadline, so did the Japanese government. The government should approve the new constitution by February 22, specifically chosen because it was George Washington’s birthday. What’s more, the government ministers must act and publicly talk as if the constitution was their handiwork. “The complete text will be presented to General MacArthur by the Japanese for his endorsement,” averred Whitney. “General MacArthur will then announce to the world that he recognizes this constitution as the work of the Japanese government.”

  This got people buzzing. They all knew presidents and generals rarely wrote their own speeches, but here was a man ordering a constitution written to his exact specifications, only to have it presented to him by the Japanese for his approval as if he’d never seen it!

  Whitney announced the leader of the group would be Charles Kades. Heads nodded. It was an obvious choice: Kades, a Wall Street lawyer working for the U.S. Treasury, age thirty-nine, possessed dazzling energy and brilliance. Everyone in the GHQ liked Kades for the same reason they liked Whitney: He was friendly and eminently approachable.

  Oh, and one last thing, said Whitney in closing. He told them their work was to be top secret, with no one—especially the Japanese—to know what they were doing. The doors would be locked, they must do all their work in the conference room, and in times of need, they were to bang on the door and a guard would escort them to the restroom. Sandwiches and coffee would be served, and Whitney would be always available. He’d be checking in every couple of hours. Best of luck, he told them.

  THE SIGHT OF an American girl driving an army jeep bouncing through the potholed streets of Tokyo must have astonished Japanese pedestrians. They would have been even more astonished had they known she was the most powerful female in Japan. Had they surmised from the determined look on her face that she was a woman on a mission, they would have been correct.

  The jeep slammed to a halt in front of a library, she hopped out, vanished into the library, and soon emerged lugging a stack of books. A quick stop at several embassies for more books, and her jeep roared back to the Dai Ichi Building where two army guards scooped up all the books and followed her inside.

  In the 1940s, long before it became reasonably common in America, this woman with the unusual name was a true multicultural. Born to Russian Jewish parents in Vienna and raised in Japan, Beate Sirota attended Mills College in California (Phi Beta Kappa) and had two years’ work experience for Time magazine when she landed a job with MacArthur’s Government Section because she spoke Japanese (and five other languages). Only twenty-two years old, she had no interest in public affairs, she had never even voted; she took the job only because she wanted to return to Japan and see her parents, who were still alive. In Tokyo, in the high-pressure atmosphere of MacArthur’s administration, she quickly established herself as more than just a translator. It w
as an environment offering bright young people enormous opportunities. “Beate,” said Kades’ aide Lt. Col. Pieter Roest, “you’re a woman, why don’t you write the woman’s rights section?”

  What did Miss Sirota know about women’s rights? Not much, other than knowing it was a subject dear to the supreme commander, as he had issued a proclamation decreeing the emancipation of women and their right to vote. She loved the story of how MacArthur, warned before issuing this decree that it would upset a lot of Japanese men, had responded with a big grin and the comment that it served them right. In her visits to her parents and her trips through the countryside, she had spoken with many women and learned firsthand what a hard life they had, having no automatic rights to money, marriage, divorce, employment, or inheritance.

  As she studied the constitutions of the United States, the Weimar Republic, France, Sweden, Norway, and other countries, Beate Sirota was amazed to find women’s rights codified in only one of them: the Soviet Union’s. She started writing. When she reviewed the Japanese Civil Code and read article 4—“Women are to be regarded as incompetent”—she resumed writing with passion.

  Beate Sirota had stumbled into Utopia.

  CHARLES KADES REVIEWED what Beate Sirota wrote and marveled, “My God, you have given Japanese women more rights than in the American Constitution!” Sirota responded dryly, “That’s not very difficult to do, because women are not in the American Constitution.”

  Touché!

  Describing the writing of a constitution does not make for exciting reading. It may be exciting for the lawyers arguing back and forth about the choice of words and whether this phrase or that phrase is redundant; for the outsider, the whole process can be tiresome. Once in a while a little inadvertent humor will emerge where people do things for reasons having nothing to do with thought or logic. When Whitney and Kades thought about the most important assignment of the whole project—writing the clause dealing with the status of the emperor—they assigned it to Ens. Richard Poole because he and the emperor had the same birthday.

  Actually the drafters of the Japanese constitution did a very smart thing: They did not base their draft on the American political system. Surprisingly enough—nobody could explain why—it turned out that they based their proposed constitution more on the British parliamentary form of government. Supreme political power would be assigned to the Diet. The cabinet would be responsible to the Diet. The prime minister would be elected not by the people but by the lower house. Anybody looking for similarities to the American Constitution would have to look long and hard.

  General Whitney came into the conference room every couple of hours to mediate disputes, fancying himself—as one of the staffers put it—“as a Thomas Jefferson.” For the entire week everyone worked nonstop. Cigarette smoke fouled the air; empty bottles and food leftovers littered the room; many people stayed up all night. Finally, in just one week—two days ahead of schedule—the American drafters of the Japanese constitution were finished. They had produced a stupendous piece of work. The question was: How would the Japanese respond?

  After MacArthur reviewed the document and signed off (Whitney had been feeding him drafts every day for his edits), Whitney, Kades, and two others went to the home of Foreign Minister Shigeru Yoshida to present copies of their document. Waiting for them were Yoshida, Minister of State Matsumoto, and liaison officer Jiro Shirasu. Whitney laid into Matsumoto, telling him that his draft was “totally unacceptable” and that he expected the three men to pay close attention to the American version about to be put in front of them. Shirasu straightened up “as if he had sat on something.” Matsumoto took deep breaths. Yoshida scanned several pages, his face changed into a “black cloud”; this was an entirely new document. “You think you can make Japan a democratic country?” said Yoshida, holding up the document in his hand. “I don’t think so.”

  “We can try,” responded Charles Kades.

  Knowing the conservative Yoshida didn’t like him and thought him too liberal and progressive, not to mention blunt, General Whitney decided he had better leave the room. Leaving the Japanese ministers to digest the document’s twenty pages, he went out into the garden to smoke a cigarette. Half an hour later Shirasu opened the door to inquire if Whitney needed anything. “Not at all,” said Whitney. “We have been enjoying your atomic sunshine,” at which point a big B-29 came roaring overhead, almost as if on cue, as aboard the Missouri.

  For the Japanese official, Whitney’s curt remark came as a jolt. Back inside, Whitney continued to put on the pressure. MacArthur did not require the Japanese government to adopt the SCAP draft literally, but he did want the draft’s underlying principles incorporated. Time was now running short. The emperor might be tried as a war criminal, he warned; a lot of people in the United States still wanted Hirohito’s head. Already the Joint Chiefs of Staff had informed MacArthur that the emperor was not immune from indictment as a war criminal: “The Supreme Commander has been unyielding in his defense of your Emperor,” Whitney reminded the three Japanese officials, and “has defended the Emperor because he considered that was the cause of right and justice, and will continue along that course to the extent of his ability.”

  “But, gentlemen, the Supreme Commander is not omnipotent.”

  Going beyond MacArthur’s instructions, Whitney went on to say that the supreme commander was willing to put the document to the Japanese people himself if the government wouldn’t. Only by accepting this document could the government expect to survive and not get thrown out in the next election.

  The meeting was quickly adjourned on a less than amicable note. Had Whitney gone too far? Afterward he returned to the Dai Ichi Building very nervous and told MacArthur what had happened. MacArthur reassured him it was okay, he had not overstepped. “Court, don’t you know that I have never repudiated any action taken by me or by a member of my staff. Right or wrong, whether I like it or not, I accept the situation as it stands and determine my next move from there.”

  Two days later Shirasu wrote Whitney that the American way to achieve an objective was too “straight and direct” for the Japanese, whose way must be “roundabout, twisted and narrow.” The letter contained a vivid illustration.

  Whitney responded to Shirasu that the straight way was better than the crooked way, and that anybody who supported the supreme commander’s principles could be assured that “the objectives can be reached promptly and directly.” The next day Shirasu came to Whitney’s office carrying a lengthy memorandum titled “Supplementary Explanation Concerning the Constitutional Revision.” It was from Matsumoto, citing past failed efforts to transplant constitutions from one country to another, and warning that “too drastic a move . . . may . . . in the end retard the smooth and wholesome progress of democracy.”

  Included in the memo was a somewhat arch reminder that this was the Land of the Rising Sun, couched in lofty metaphors only a Japanese could muster: “Some of the roses of the West, when cultivated in Japan, lose their fragrance.”

  13

  MacArthur Breaks the Impasse

  THE TWO SIDES were at an impasse. The gulf was huge. MacArthur knew he could go ahead and publish the American version, though he knew that doing so would smack of American tyranny. Even if he could break the impasse, he didn’t want to make the first move any more than he had with the emperor. Such a gesture would upset the delicate dynamic between a powerful occupier and a proud supplicant seeking to become a full partner. Whitney had thrown down the gauntlet: The Japanese must deliver. If they feared the supreme commander, they would respond. MacArthur, with his insight into human psychology, would wait, confident that cooler heads in the Diet would prevail and they would come to him.

  He held two aces. Whitney, he knew, had made it explicitly clear that as far as the Allies were concerned, the emperor was in jeopardy, whereas the Americans would protect him, albeit with reduced stature. The second ace was the Far Eastern Commission, soon to begin. Who did the Japanese prefer to deal with
: a known entity like SCAP, or a remote and complex international agency likely to be dominated by the USSR and its veto power?

  In the Diet a battle raged. Prime Minister Kijuro Shidehara and two other ministers read the beginning chapters of the translated SCAP draft and said they could never accept it. Welfare Minister Hitoshi Ashida disagreed and pointed out that if SCAP went ahead and published it, the people would be delighted, and they would all lose their jobs after the next election. Then a surprising voice piped up out of the blue: Joji Matsumoto, whose committee had written the draft rejected by MacArthur. As a scholar and a man with a modest understanding of English, he knew how easy it was to make mountains out of molehills in trying to use words precisely, especially in the difficult business of translating English into a language as different as Japanese. Sometimes it took a translator two days to get through a single page. “Turning Japanese into English, and vice-versa, with the precision of nuance required by lawyers is virtually impossible,” observes one modern-day historian. “Japanese as a language bears no relation to English or any other European language, and the process of translation is more like describing a picture in words—creating an equivalent, not a replica. Not only is it difficult, it is also particularly time-consuming.”

  Maybe the two versions weren’t so different, Matsumoto said. Heads must have turned at this startling pronouncement. Maybe with more time it might be possible for him to reconcile his document with the American one. However, by now Matsumoto had lost a lot of credibility, and had come under scathing criticism when it was revealed that SCAP had repeatedly warned him and he had failed to share these warnings with the cabinet. Matsumoto, courageous though he was in speaking up and admitting his failure, was now dead meat.