An Inoffensive Rearmament (23 page)

Yet the logic of rearmament could not disregard the former military officers of Japan. As the NPR assumed its potential military character and we celebrated the supply of increasingly heavier weapons and equipment, the Japanese cautiously opened the question of using former military officers in the force. Mr. Masuhara pointed out to General Shepard that some of the younger Imperial officers had recently been depurged and that there were hints that older officers would be removed from the purge lists shortly. Newspapers began to explore the possibilities involved, and American advisers were queried on their views. In February 1951, authority was cleared to induct these individuals, and subsequently we learned that Prime Minister Yoshida and General Ridgway, the new SCAP, were meeting to consider the desirability of depurging former colonels and lieutenant colonels with a view to bringing them into the NPR.

Although there was no serious objection raised to the induction of the younger former officers, the proposal to incorporate senior Imperial officers was greeted less than enthusiastically by some of our advisers and many Japanese. These officers, of course, posed a natural threat to those already in the NPR, but many sincere Japanese resisted their inclusion in the force on principle. Six years of national indoctrination by the occupation did not serve to endear former military leaders in the hearts of the people. I noted that the civilians in NPR Headquarters appeared especially hostile. Several months elapsed while feet dragged. When General Izeki, deputy chief of the General Group, one day requested that I extend the time for submission of certain information on these senior candidates for the NPR, I asked him bluntly what was delaying the decision. He assured me that neither General Hayashi nor himself had any objection, but he said that the young civilian bureaucrats in the director general's office strongly opposed
bringing senior Imperial officers into the NPR. Mr. Masuhara, he said, was being pulled in all directions, but he thought a compromise could somehow be arranged. Eventually 243 graduates of the Imperial Army and Navy academies, the younger men initially considered, were enrolled in the first officer training course for depurgees in the latter part of August 1951. In October, 812 former Imperial captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels were brought into the NPR and ordered to attend a two-month reorientation course. The door was now open for the former military personnel to resume their interrupted careers.

The long-debated issue of whether to use former Imperial officers was thus not a matter of principle or even need but a question of timeliness. Nothing that General Willoughby or the G-2 Section could do in 1950 had any impact on the decision to keep these officers out of the NPR at that time. American policy, General MacArthur's directives, Allied attitudes, world opinion, and the Japanese public had grown to accept a military establishment for Japan, and it no longer mattered who served in the force. The Imperial officers who only a short time before had been viewed with suspicion and concern now joined the new army without any fuss or opposition and proceeded with their training as though they had always been a part of the NPR.

Time has the same effect on human attitudes, human behavior, and historical acceptance that it has on any process of erosion. One can chop rocks and stones with an axe until sparks fly and the brain is jarred, but all one can accomplish is to dull the axe. Yet water flowing into the sea in time has gouged out the great canyons of the Colorado. The War of Roses lasted a generation, but how many today know where it was fought? The Christians during the Crusades, bent on seeking the Holy Grail, hated the Saracens so vilely that it is reported they actually ate their enemy in battle, but that long-forgotten hate has turned to compassion and loans to our Arab brothers. And so, as the slaughter in the Holy War against communism escalates, humanity knows that both sides will eventually settle their differences at the conference table, unless time dictates destruction for both.

The circumstance that caused a hiatus in the use of Imperial officers in Japan's military establishment permitted the fashioning of a democratically inclined modern force. The initial leaders of the NPR, inexperienced in military matters, friendly to American leadership, and unhampered by preconceived ideas or ordeals, laid the foundation in the organization for a permissive climate that could not have come about in a force dominated from its inception by former officers of
the Imperial military establishment. Brutality as a symbol of toughness, so vital a part of the old army, could not re-establish itself among officers who abhorred its practice; instead there developed in the NPR a new spirit dedicated to the dignity of the individual soldier. When the purgees did join the force, they were inducted in relatively small numbers into an organization that was dominated by American military concepts and that had accepted these concepts as superior to those of the old army. They joined a “going concern” in which they had to move cautiously, picking their uncertain way in an environment not altogether familiar. They were not the “top dogs.” They had been in prewar Japan, or they might have been as the creators of the NPR. If they wanted to move up in this new organization, they would have to demonstrate not only military skills and knowledge but tolerance and acceptance. On the other hand, they possessed much they could give the new force: military competence, strength of character, devotion to country, and hopefully a deep understanding of past mistakes.

In December 1951, Lieutenant Colonel Figgess of the British Embassy, after a visit to three NPR installations, had a revealing comment to make in his written report on the newly integrated former Imperial majors and lieutenant colonels he had observed at a field-firing exercise of a company in an attack. He wrote,

However, the especial factor of interest was the reaction of the former Japanese Army officers to the training exercises and demonstrations. At first they were silent and appeared to be somewhat shy of expressing any opinion and two individuals who I engaged in conversation separately told me that despite their two months staff course at Kurihama, they had been unprepared to find the NPR in such an advanced state of military readiness. Later on, as they shed their reserve, it was clear that they were taking a keen interest in everything that they saw but my impression was that, as a whole, they were surprisingly ignorant of modern infantry tactics and methods of training, and that was as far as these matters were concerned, any of the junior officers of the NPR who had been in the force for just over a year would probably be more competent than these former professional officers. (Most of our advisers subscribed to this observation.) For example, it was clear from the questions asked and the comments offered that the officers, as a body, were unfamiliar with the principle of fire and movement and one of the group told me
that this system was not practiced in the old Japanese Army because the lavish expenditure of ammunition which it involved would never have been permitted.

Interestingly, Lieutenant Colonel Figgess speculated,

Although their training at the moment is of high order, and the progress made during the past six or eight months is certainly remarkable, the Japanese if left to themselves at this juncture would, I think, tend to slip from the straight and narrow path laid down by the Americans and indulge in training schedules of their own conception. Some of this no doubt would be harmless though time-consuming junketing such as fancy marching, honour guards and ceremonial drill but some might tend to take on the flavor of less agreeable features of the old Japanese Army.

This was a warm compliment to American capabilities and achievements from a sincere soldier. Yet as I read his thought-provoking report, I wondered whether we were repeating in Japan what we had so sadly produced in South Korea—a great paper army with officers highly articulate in military jargon and soldiers suffering from the dry rot of a sterile nothingness in their souls.

I recalled the early days of July 1950 when a small band of bitter American officers watched the South Korean army they had so diligently trained fall apart and flee in terror before the invaders from the North. This was the army that had been lauded in the American press as the best army in Asia. Its officers were schooled in what Brigadier General William L. Roberts, chief of the Advisory Group Korea, had called his “Little West Point.” Many of these officers had undergone advanced training in Korean versions of our own infantry school at Leavenworth, Kansas. But there was something very vital missing in the South Korean army. Nor did the communists outnumber our ally, for South Korea, with 25 million people, enjoyed a population two and a half times that of North Korea.

What had occurred was that our South Korean officers and men had learned the synthesis of soldiering. They could recite their classroom lessons well. They talked a good game of war. Everyone worked, practiced, and maneuvered like soldiers, but when the chips were down, they ran like cattle in a stampede.

In the early phase of the Korean invasion, companies, battalions, and regiments retreated in full flight without permission, without orders, and in many
instances without making contact with the enemy. They were scattered like chaff before the wind by the same kind of Koreans as they were, except the invaders lived north of the 38th parallel. One must ponder, why did the South Koreans run and why did the “communist gooks” from the north fight?

As I watched our NPR battalions run through their field exercises with their usual excellence, I always reserved a hope that our methods had not spoiled the traditional fighting qualities of the Japanese soldier. At such moments, I always sensed that there was something resilient and tough in the guts of the Japanese. One thing is certain, outer military trappings, those often-lauded characteristics—neat uniforms, shined shoes, sharp commands, articulate officers, and even modern weapons do not make a fighting army.
¹

CHAPTER TEN

SEISHIN KYŌIKU

Napoleon liked to say, “An Army traveled on its stomach,” but he also knew that an army fights with its heart. More than any soldier, the Japanese Imperial
heitai
had
seishin kyōiku,
or “military spirit.” Spirit, heart, guts, or
seishin kyōiku,
whatever one calls it, is the essence of a fighting force. Without it, no soldier is worth his salt and no army worth its budget.

When Mr. Masuhara became director general of the NPR, he established his family in Tōkyō, a few houses down the street from my quarters. This gave us both an opportunity to become acquainted socially, and although at that time he spoke very little English and my Japanese was limited to enthusiastic “ah-so's,” we found that a scotch or two did wonders for communication and understanding.

About nine months after the establishment of the NPR, I found Mr. Masuhara talking more and more about the spirit of the soldiers. He seemed agitated whenever he brought up the subject, and he would go on, beyond my capability to understand, telling me what
seishin kyōiku
meant when he was a lieutenant in the Japanese Imperial Army.

I never got the full significance of the message he was trying to convey to me until one day I read an inspection report sent to me by the chief of the General Group, General Hayashi. Part of the report was in English and apparently prepared personally by the general for my information. In it, he went into some detail describing a parade and review that was held in his honor. Obviously disappointed, General Hayashi concluded, “I was very discouraged. As the men marched in review, I saw no spirit in their eyes.”

The strange comment—“no spirit in their eyes”—produced mixed thoughts and emotions within me. “No spirit in their eyes.” At first I smiled to myself at the unaccustomed combination of words, but I knew that General Hayashi was a very serious, sincere man, and if he took the trouble to write me that his men did not show spirit in their eyes, something was “bugging” him, and I was determined to find out what.