Jean MacArthur and Arthur MacArthur IV
JEAN WAS SIXTY-FOUR when her husband died. She stayed in the Waldorf Towers and lived until 2000. She died at the age of 101. She received the Medal of Freedom in 1988 from President Reagan, the Legion of Merit from the Philippines in 1993, and a visit by Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko during their 1994 visit to the United States. Young Arthur MacArthur IV, who was seven at the start of the occupation and fourteen at the end, was one of the world’s most publicized children (even appearing on the cover of Life magazine). He had no interest in following the illustrious career of his father and grandfather. He majored in music at Columbia and pursued a short career as a composer. He eventually drifted into the bohemian community of Greenwich Village, and faded from view. He is believed still to be living in New York, under an assumed name.
Japanese Constitution
MACARTHUR STARTLED MANY people when he predicted that the Japanese constitution would last a hundred years. May 3, the day the constitution became effective, was not a big day in 1947, but it is now. It’s Japan’s national holiday, when people celebrate a document that has survived intact for nearly seven decades, exactly the way MacArthur left it. No major amendment or revision has been made.
Japanese History of World War II
FOR TWENTY YEARS, in its published guidelines for the basic history textbooks for Japanese schools, Japan’s Education Ministry devoted more than two hundred pages to World War II. In 1977 it abruptly reduced the guidelines to six pages, consisting mostly of photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a table of Japanese war dead, and photographs of the firebombing of Tokyo.
This effort to rewrite history and present itself as a victim drew an immediate international reaction. Virtually every nation that had fought against Japan protested vehemently. What about all the wartime atrocities and seventeen million people killed by Japan? The United States said nothing. (A visitor to Hiroshima will be surprised to see a monument to the dead of Auschwitz. It is Japan’s effort to align itself with the Jews as the war’s victims.)
The occupation, like war guilt, is widely considered to be best forgotten. A publicity booklet put out by the Ministry of Foreign Relations, The Japan of Today, makes no mention of the occupation at all: “In August 1945 an exhausted and battle-weary nation accepted the surrender terms of the Allied powers and by Imperial edict the people laid down their arms. Seven years later, in September 1951, Japan signed the peace treaty.”
State Shinto, banned by the occupation, continues to exist. The Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo had in front two huge bronze lanterns bearing friezes engraved with figures of Japanese war heroes and scenes of celebrated battles. The Shinto priests were ordered by the Americans to cover the reliefs with cement. Several years after the Americans left, in 1957, the cement was removed.
Shiro Ishii
THE ISHII STORY, covered up during the occupation, remained in the shadows for many years. None of the major players of the occupation—MacArthur, Whitney, and Willoughby—mentioned it in their memoirs. Nor did Truman, Marshall, or Acheson. Even major books about MacArthur and Japan—William Manchester’s American Caesar (1978), Clayton James’ The Years of MacArthur (1985), John Dower’s Embracing Defeat (2000), and Eiji Takemae’s Inside GHQ (2002) contain only single lines, maybe a paragraph. The only information about Ishii is found in specialized books on bioterrorism.
Almost all of the latter, written many decades after the occupation, express horror at MacArthur’s apparent lack of conscience and morality. It is easy to forget the circumstances at the time, plus no military commander would dare make such a decision on his own. MacArthur kicked the Ishii question upstairs to the Joint Chiefs and the White House, and they all went back and forth for two years before deciding what to do. The decision they made was unanimous; there was not a single voice of dissent. Leaders frequently have to do things they are not proud of.
A more interesting question, rarely asked by academics writing about MacArthur and the occupation, focuses on the amorality of the Japanese. After the 1951 peace treaty and the dissolution of SCAP, the Japanese government might have rescinded the immunity deal and gone after the Unit 731 scientists. It did not. In fact it did just the opposite: It leaned over backward: Many of these rogues attained high positions in academia and government, and some, like Ryoichi Naito, became CEOs of major pharmaceutical companies. One scientist, using his knowledge of frozen bodies, became chief advisor to a Japanese expedition to the South Pole, and another scientist became president of Japan’s largest blood-processing facility. Ishii lived the rest of his life in quiet retirement, and died in 1967, at the age of sixty-seven, of natural causes. Rumors surfaced that the United States had brought Ishii to America to consult with scientists at Fort Detrick (originally called Camp Detrick). There is no evidence of this.
In 1982 China, protesting the rewriting of Japanese schoolbooks and elimination of any mention of atrocities, raised the case of germ warfare at Harbin. At Harbin it built a museum consisting of wax models of vivisections, which can be seen on the Internet under the heading “Pingfan.”
For a nation not known for facing unpleasant truths, the Japanese people pulled a major surprise that year. A book came out in Japan by Seiichi Morimura and Masaki Shimozato exposing, for the first time, the Unit 731 atrocities, called The Devil’s Gluttony. It became a Japanese bestseller. Apparently the Japanese people have a greater capacity to face the truth than the Japanese government.
Defendants Convicted at the IMTFE Trial
SIX OF THE eighteen sentenced to prison terms died in prison, one of them being General Umezu, the man who stopped Ishii and later signed the Missouri surrender. Shigemitsu was released in 1950. Most of the other prisoners were released in 1954. By 1958, all the remaining prisoners were free.
JFK and Vietnam
IN 1961 PRESIDENT John Kennedy met MacArthur for the first time, expecting to find “a stuffy and pompous egocentric.” He was surprised: MacArthur was “one of the most fascinating conversationalists he had ever met, politically shrewd and intellectually sharp.” He followed up by inviting MacArthur to lunch at the White House. It lasted almost three hours. According to presidential aide Kenneth O’Donnell, MacArthur implored JFK to stay out of Vietnam and any other part of the Asian mainland; the so-called domino theory was a ridiculous concept in a nuclear age; to maintain military security, America’s domestic problems merited far more priority than Vietnam. Kennedy came out of the meeting “stunned” and “enormously impressed.”
The Genie Comes Out of the Bottle
“NEVER PROPHESY, ESPECIALLY about the future,” said the movie magnate Samuel Goldwyn. In 1950 Japan’s future looked very uncertain. MacArthur was confident his efforts had been successful, but no one in his right mind could have predicted the economic juggernaut Japan would soon become. Certainly not John Foster Dulles, who advised the Japanese to export their cars to Asia because they would never be able to produce the type of vehicles that American consumers wanted.
By the mid-1960s, when Japanese cars and electronic goods appeared out of nowhere to capture global markets, it became obvious that the “boy of twelve” had grown up. During this time, the president of a Latin American country visited Japan and asked a Japanese minister the reasons for Japan’s success. “The best way to obtain freedom and prosperity,” the minister replied, “was to wage war against the United States and lose it.”
By 1990, Japan had the world’s second-strongest economy after the United States, twice the size of Germany’s and eighteen times the size of Great Britain’s. Today Japan is the world’s largest creditor nation and ranks among the top three countries on virtually every economic indicator: size of economy, private financial assets, R&D, patents, industrial output, manufacturing output, and services. On quality of life, it ranks number one in life expectancy and among the top three in book and music sales and international spending.
Lessons from Japan on How to Run an Occupation in Iraq
SADLY, THEY WERE LOST. Admirable though America’s objectives were in going into Iraq and freeing the people from an oppressive regime, the effort fell short due to massive incompetence and fraud. Most regrettable was the total lack of planning, and the cavalier bet that American troops would be greeted with flowers. A bet is not a plan. Most unfortunate of all, the United States tried to undertake the mission without a heavyweight leader. As any executive recruiter knows, you don’t undertake a difficult project if you don’t have the right person to run it; otherwise it’s best to stay away. As MacArthur would say, you don’t undertake a war unless you absolutely have the resources to win it.
Iraq and Japan are obviously very different, but that’s what good planning is supposed to do: analyze the situation and develop an appropriate strategy. Our occupation of Japan was one of the greatest feats of American leadership; our occupation of Iraq was the opposite. In 2003, as it prepared to invade Iraq in what hopefully would be no more than a few days, the United States had in its possession enough experience and know-how to write the definitive manual on how to run an occupation. Inexcusably and inexplicably, the United States ignored it. Nobody in the government bothered to open up a history book.
Yet one must not be so facile. MacArthur’s greatest military triumph was Inchon. Virtually nobody thought it would work. The enemy was on a roll, the Allied forces were in bad shape. MacArthur knew he had to do something extraordinary and dramatic. To minimize the risks he developed a meticulous plan down to the last detail of a massive one-hour assault.
In 2006 in Iraq, the U.S. Army was in a similar situation: getting knocked about by the insurgents. Morale was low, Americans were losing hope. What to do? The Defense Department developed an equally detailed plan—an outrageous gamble—calling for an increase in troops, to be headed by the man in charge of counterinsurgency, Gen. David Petraeus. Washington was abuzz; more troops in Iraq was the last thing people wanted to hear. Yet President Bush authorized Petraeus to go ahead; he would take the heat if it failed. Naysayers in America—and they were legion, including presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—said the surge would never work. . . .
How Douglas MacArthur would have jubilated at the result. When a plan is carefully thought out and the upside far outweighs the downside, a massive risk can be called “prudent.”
So, too, was the American occupation of Japan. It was a gamble that few people thought would end well. Thanks to the supreme commander, it did.
Notes
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PREFACE
xiii “He is shrewd”: Lewin, 178.
xiv majestic title: Dwight Eisenhower also went by the title of Supreme Commander, but it was solely in a military capacity, first as Supreme Allied Commander, Expeditionary Forces (for the Normandy invasion), and later as Supreme Commander when he was head of NATO for a brief period in 1951. MacArthur had the more exalted full title (“of the Allied Powers”). He also had substantially more responsibility, both civil and military.
xiv “had such enormous”: Sebald, 103. William Sebald, who carried the rank of ambassador, was the State Department representative in Japan during the occupation.
xiv “The greatest gamble”: Wildes, 12; Kelley and Ryan, 144.
xiv “without a single shot”: Yoshida, 50.
xv “one of the worst-reported”: Gunther, xiii.
xv “MacArthur is our greatest”: Schmidt, 192; Harvey, 207
xv Jimmy Doolittle raids: It should be noted today where there is controversy over the U.S. use of drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the Doolittle raids on Japan were extremely successful in avoiding off-limits targets such as schools, hospitals, and the Emperor’s Palace—in sharp contrast to Japanese bombers that deliberately attacked Red Cross and Allied hospital ships.
xv Japanese peace overtures and no need for atom bomb or invasion: Walter Trohan, “Rare Peace Bid U.S. Rebuffed 7 Months Ago,” Chicago Tribune, August 19, 1945; Evans and Romerstein, 202; Kubek, 116–20.
xvi ten million Japanese might have starved: Dower, 93; Frank, Downfall, 35; Irokawa, 37.
1: A PRESIDENT ROLLS THE DICE
6 Truman wishing the Medal of Honor over the U.S. presidency: Perret, 638. Just one month later, in presenting the Medal of Honor to Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, the president actually said this to several generals.
7 “discussed . . . Supreme Commander”: Truman Diaries, June 17, 1945, in Off the Record. Truman misquoted the expression by including the Lodge family. The original quote from John C. Bossidy’s 1910 poem read: “And this is good old Boston, The home of the bean and the cod, Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots, And the Cabots talk only to God.”
7 “a play actor . . . how a country”: Ibid.
7 “MacArthur says”: Manchester, 145.
7 “a senior officer should not be”: MacArthur, 85.
8 Japanese attack on Clark, Iba, and Nichols airfields: Bergamini, 856.
8 “making a mistake”: Truman Diaries, August 10, 1945, in Off the Record, 60.
2: FLYING NINE HUNDRED MILES FROM OKINAWA TO ATSUGI
10 “My God, general”: Manchester, 444; Breuer, 236.
10 “You will exercise”: U.S. Department of State, Occupation of Japan, Appendix 16, 89, in Perry, 63.
10 “Manila is ours”: Lee and Henschel, 178.
11 C-54 marked Bataan: There were actually two Bataans. The famous one, used by MacArthur in the Philippines, was a B-17E Flying Fortress, at the time back in California undergoing a total overhaul. In need of a more modern aircraft, MacArthur accepted delivery of a new C-54, called Bataan II. This was the plane he used in Japan for two years until it was replaced by a Super G Constellation marked SCAP.
11 “Harbor mined”: Brines, 39–40.
11 “a ghostly fox”: Archer, 140.
12 “Our experts”: Mashbir, 22.
13 “The winner of the next war”: Hunt, 77.
13 “Take Buna”: Eichelberger, 21. This was vintage MacArthur language: “or not come back alive”—much more memorable than “don’t come back alive.”
13 “the two best damn officers”: Ibid., xviii.
13 three Army positions appointed solely by FDR: Ibid., xi.
14 “pictures of cadets”: Ibid., xviii.
14 “We have stopped”: Drape, 240.
14 “deserved a team”: Ibid., xix.
14 “Had there been”: Schoor, 27–28.
15 “To take up”: Ganoe, 48.
16 “If at any time”: Mashbir, 309.
17 Imperial Order of Meiji (medals of Eichelberger): Cover story, “General Robert Eichelberger,” Time, September 10, 1945, 32.
18 “The Japanese High Command”: Eichelberger, xii.
18 “I am Commander Anatoliy Rodionov”: Craig, 288.
18 the Russians and General Yamashita: Breuer, 185–86.
19 “principal architect”: Sidney Shalett, “Occupation of Japan Planned Like a Battle,” New York Times, September 2, 1945, 1.
19 “fool-proof”: Ibid.
19 “First destroy”: Whitney, 213. In his memoirs, 282–83, MacArthur adds four more: “punish war criminals . . . modernize the constitution . . . hold free elections . . . separate church from state.” Whitney’s version is the correct one: There is no evidence that MacArthur thought about the Japanese constitution at the time.
20 “From the moment”: MacArthur, 282–83.
20 Initial Post-Surrender Policy: The Truman administration soon afterward released this document to the public. See “Text of White House Statement on Occupation Policy in Japan,” New York Times, September 23, 1945, 3.
21 “Resist with tooth and nail!”: Okamoto, 14.
22 “I met all”: MacArthur, 30.
23 “My soldiers will never”: Choate, 66.
23 “The Emperor requests”: Ibid., 67.
23 “
We declared war”: Toland, The Rising Sun, 838.
25 “I could see . . . gambled blindly with death”: Whitney, 214.
3: “THE MOST COURAGEOUS ACT OF THE ENTIRE WAR”
26 “simply born”: Choate, 67.
26 “Homma may have”: Miller, Fighter for Freedom, 12.
26 “I’m glad to meet”: Ibid., 278.
27 “I have had”: Grew, 534.
27 “The naïveté of the Japanese”: Ibid., 479.
28 Churchill . . . “the most daring”: Willoughby, 295; Whitney, 215.
29 “Bob, this is payoff time”: Craig, 292; Whitney, 215; the actual phrase, though slightly less colorful, is recalled by Eichelberger as “Bob, this is the payoff,” Eichelberger, Jungle Road, 262.
29 “It was a masterpiece”: Kawai, 12.
29 “Son, I think you’re in the wrong army”: Craig, 292–93.
31 “The gauntlet must be run”: Eichelberger, 262.
31 “No one can live forever”: Toland, 865.
31 “their inability”: Harries, 43.
31 egg incident: Sheldon, 29.
31 2,185 SCAPINS: General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Catalog of Directives to the Japanese Government. Considering that MacArthur was supreme commander for almost two thousand days, this volume works out to be a frequency of slightly more than one a day, every day of the week. These instructions covered countless government activities, ranging from the general to the specific. Examples include distribution of food, abolition of the Japanese general headquarters, proceedings of the Diet, apprehension of suspected war criminals, fishery inspection, supply of smallpox vaccine to repatriation ships, fire protection, hoisting of the national flag, shipment of Chinese cabbage seed to Korea, and application for permission to manufacture small-size passenger cars.
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