Supreme Commander (7 page)

In the Philippines, America has evolved a modern era for this new free world of Asia. In the Philippines, America has demonstrated that peoples of the East and peoples of the West may walk side by side in mutual respect and with mutual benefit. The history of our sovereignty there has now the full confidence of the East.

And so, my fellow countrymen, today I report to you that your sons and daughters have served you well and faithfully with the calm, deliberate, determined fighting spirit of the American soldier and sailor based upon a tradition of historical trait, as against the fanaticism of an enemy supported only by mythological fiction, their spiritual strength and power has brought us through to victory. They are homeward bound—take care of them.

In this speech MacArthur sent several powerful messages. He recognized that the atom bomb had made the “traditional concept of war” obsolete. He reminded the Japanese that he came only as Matthew Perry had, to open up Japan and help it become a major power. He assured them that their talents, properly utilized, could lead to a new era of “dignity,” “liberty,” and “relief from fear.”

Nobody listened more intently than the eleven Japanese in the radio room of the destroyer taking them back to shore, Toshikazu Kase doing his best to provide a simultaneous translation. “Is it not rare good fortune,” asked Kase when the speech was finished, “that a man of such caliber and character should have been designated as the supreme commander who will shape the destiny of Japan?”

In the meantime, crowded into Admiral Halsey's cabin after the speech were all the Allied commanders. They wanted a drink. “If ever a day demanded champagne, this was it, but I could serve them only coffee and doughnuts,” recalled Halsey. The
Missouri
, per MacArthur's orders, would be a dry zone.

Upon arriving back in Tokyo, Kase prepared his written report for Shigemitsu to deliver to the emperor. At the end of the report he raised a question: Whether it would have been possible for Japan, had it been the victor, to embrace the vanquished with a similar magnanimity? His answer was no. Returning from his audience with the emperor, Shigemitsu told Kase that Hirohito agreed.

Thinking about what MacArthur had tried to communicate on board the
Missouri
, Kase concluded: “We were not beaten on the battlefields by dint of superior arms. We were defeated by a nobler ideal. The real issue was moral.”

5

“Down but Not Out”

If we allow the pain and humility to breed within us the dark thoughts of future revenge, our spirit will be warped and perverted into a morbidly base design. . . . But if we use this pain and humiliation as a spur to self-reflection and reform, and if we make this self-reflection and reform the motive force for a great constructive effort, there is nothing to stop us from building, out of the ashes of our defeat, a magnificent new Japan.

—
NIPPON TIMES

(on the surrender ceremony)

 

F
OR YEARS THE
Japanese people had been spoon-fed a panoply of lies breathtaking in audacity. According to the relentless propaganda of the militarists, Japan had conquered the Philippines, the Netherlands East Indies, New Guinea, Australia, Hawaii, even the West Coast of the United States.

The specifics would have astounded even those masters of lies, the Nazis and the Soviets. The Japanese navy was on a roll. Midway was just a blip on the horizon. As the American navy attempted to cross the Pacific, the Japanese propaganda drums continued their relentless beat of fabrications. Believing what they were being told, hundreds of Japanese villages erected
Charen Kensho-tu
—monuments to the victorious dead—as though Japan's enemies had already surrendered. Little did they know that most Japanese warships were resting on the bottom of the deep Pacific. The more specific the claim, the more outrageous the lie. Okinawa, the government announced, would be the war's
sekigahara
(decisive battle). (Certainly it had better be, given that Okinawa was only one day's sail from the southern Japanese islands.)

Lies, once started, inevitably grow into bigger lies—impossible lies. The Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, after the news of the American invasion of Okinawa, insisted there was nothing to worry about, the 180,000 American soldiers and marines had been allowed to land so Japanese kamikazes could sink their supporting ships and isolate the invaders on the island, where they would be destroyed.

When U.S. broadcasts announced on June 21 that Okinawa had surrendered, people in Japan realized that the war had not been going like they were being told and invasion of the homeland was imminent. For months now, many had suspected as much, beginning with the March 9 raid on Tokyo by Gen. Jimmy Doolittle. It was the greatest single destruction in the history of warfare. Conventional bombs were used. In the ensuing firestorm, in just a few hours 84,000 people burned to death and one million people were left wandering the streets, their homes and apartment buildings reduced to rubble.
*
Fifteen square miles were totally destroyed.

The knowledge that the homeland was open to attack must have hit Japan like a thunderbolt. Yet Japan did not surrender, even though the imperial headquarters had concluded in mid-1944 that the cause was hopeless. Japan's stubbornness was extraordinary. Five months later, after the Tokyo raids, with the knockout weapon finally perfected and made available, President Truman must have reflected on how the destruction of Tokyo had failed to get the message across. It certainly had not been for want of trying. Before bombing Tokyo the United States had sent planes over the city to drop leaflets warning civilians to evacuate immediately. Titled “Appeal to the People,” the leaflet stated: “You are not the enemy of America. Our enemy is the Japanese militarists who dragged you into the war.” No response.

After the first atom bomb, the Americans again dropped leaflets, threatening more destruction. Again no response. So Truman went ahead and ordered the second bomb.

The Japanese people, unlike three of the six government ministers who still voted no after the second bomb, were stunned. How could this happen? How could there exist an enemy capable of such devastation?

When a bomb as powerful as the one at Hiroshima or Nagasaki is dropped on a defenseless city, one would expect an outpouring of national outrage. MacArthur certainly thought so, which is why he had opposed the measure. Only it didn't happen. The national outrage over the atom bomb was directed not at the Americans but at the Japanese militarists who had undertaken such a brutal war and lied to the people.

To salvage their pride in the shame of defeat, the Japanese elevated the Americans: The militarists brought it on us! How could we have possibly beaten a country as strong as America? There would be no hatred for the destruction America had brought about, no hatred of the conqueror. The time had come for Japan to reject the past.

MacArthur would go after the militarists. He would purge them and throw them in jail. He had a secret weapon in mind: women. On the plane ride to Atsugi he had discussed the fate of Japan with General Fellers. “It's very simple,” said MacArthur. “We'll use the instrumentality of the Japanese government to implement the Occupation.”

Fellers was baffled: What in the world was MacArthur talking about?

“We're going to give Japanese women the vote.”

“The Japanese men won't like it,” responded Fellers.

“I don't care. I want to destroy the military. Women don't want war.” End of discussion.

The militarists, MacArthur knew, were up to no good. In the two weeks of grace between the surrender announcement on August 15 and the August 29 arrival of Col. Charles Tench's C-47s at Atsugi and Admiral Halsey's fleet of 263 vessels in Tokyo Bay, vast stockpiles of food and industrial raw materials had disappeared into black markets and secret warehouses—the work of militarists hoping to win political support by giving away free supplies. Even more outrageous were the actions of the War Ministry, complicit in this subterfuge: It had ordered its officials and field commanders to destroy all records of where these supplies were located. These ministry officials would soon find themselves out of a job and probably arrested and put on trial for war crimes. But in the meantime MacArthur had a crisis on his hands. People in the streets were starving. After his one-egg breakfast on his second day, he had immediately sent a cable to Washington ordering the shipment of 3.5 million tons of food. Getting no quick response, he sent a second message: “Give me bread or give me bullets.”

He got the food. Within weeks American planes, followed by ships, arrived with thousands of tons of flour, rolled oats, canned goods, rice, blankets, even medical supplies. Commented Maj. Gen. William Marquat, later the head of SCAP's Economic and Scientific Section: “The Japanese are prisoners of war, and we don't let our prisoners starve, do we?” Nor would the soldiers have to consume precious local food supplies. To ensure that Americans wouldn't have to use the local food markets, the U.S. Army constructed a large hydroponics farm for growing produce.

MacArthur had already had a fight with one of his military officers over food. It started when he heard a complaint from a delegation of Japanese fishermen that they were no longer being allowed to fish. Apparently a SCAP officer had gotten suspicious that the fishermen were planting mines in Tokyo Bay. How paranoid do military people have to get? MacArthur canceled the regulation on the spot. Overnight he became the god of the fishermen, the Poseidon of Japan.

The sight of people scrounging for food was heartrending, a shortage so bad that one woman was seen using a pair of tweezers to pick up seeds spilled on the street. Tokyo's Ueno train station was crawling with orphans collecting cigarette butts to sell. Japan was reduced to an “onion-skin economy” in which people peeled off more and more layers of their remaining family belongings and took them out to the countryside to sell to farmers for scraps of food to survive. More than 10 percent of the people in Japan were homeless. Nagasaki lost 74 percent of its buildings; Hiroshima lost 59 percent, Tokyo, 65, Osaka, 57. Observed one journalist: “This city now is a world of scarcity in which every nail, every rag, and even a tangerine peel has a market value. A cupful of rice, three cigarettes, or four matches are all a day's ration. Men pick up every grain of rice out of their tin lunch boxes; there are too few to be wasted. . . . On the Ginza, once the show street of Tokyo . . . hungry kids and young women beg for gum and chocolate and peanuts from soldiers.”

But to think of Japan as an utterly beaten nation—an easy conclusion to draw from the pictures of the devastation of its major cities—is an oversimplification. Horrendous damage notwithstanding, Japan was still an industrial power compared with other nations in Asia. Railways were largely intact, the electric power system remained, and hydroelectric plants outside cities were still functioning. Even in Hiroshima, within forty-eight hours of the atomic bomb, trains were running through the city. The government was still in place and operating.

An expression emerged that was to be used frequently during the occupation: “Dempsey damage.” It referred to the famous 1926 heavyweight championship match in which Jack Dempsey knocked down Gene Tunney, yet thanks to “the long count,” Tunney was able to get up and go on to win the fight. Tunney later described himself as being “down but not out.” So, no matter how devastated Japan looked, the country was not out. Everyone in the major cities was busy cleaning the streets, looking for salvageable items, and rebuilding their burned-down houses.

MacArthur had his game plan in mind. He would assign his men to go after the militarists and make a show of their criminality; he would remain above the fray and address the people of a defeated, bewildered nation sorely in need of hope and idealism. America's mission was not to keep Japan down, but to get it on its feet again.

 

IT HAD BEEN
a long day, this September 2, and MacArthur was beat and emotionally exhausted. He was not about to rest on his laurels, however; he had work to do.

If Mamoru Shigemitsu, who must have had an even more emotionally draining day on top of all his physical difficulties, thought he might have a peaceful afternoon, he was sorely mistaken. Late that afternoon, when he might otherwise be having his cup of tea, he was summoned to a meeting at MacArthur's temporary office and informed by one of MacArthur's aides that the general was about to issue three directives, the most important of which was the first, announcing that Japan was now under military government. The directives would go into effect within twenty-four hours.

Shigemitsu was stunned. This was not the deal as he understood it from the Potsdam Declaration, promising a Japan based on the free will of the people. If Japan had surrendered, why did it need a new form of government?

He requested a meeting to discuss the situation before any directives went into effect. To his surprise and relief, he was granted one for 10:30 the next day, and it would be with the supreme commander himself. One imagines Shigemitsu must have had a sleepless night thinking how to present his case. It would be the most important meeting of his entire life. As foreign minister he knew what the United States was doing in Germany under the Morgenthau Plan: Germany was being partitioned and all its heavy industry destroyed. Assuming the powerful U.S. secretary of the treasury had developed a similar plan for Japan, it was only reasonable to assume MacArthur intended to follow it to the fullest. Might he be planning to put Japan back into the Stone Age?

There was no one in the State Department he could talk to. The supreme commander had total and complete power: He was President Truman's sole delegate, a secretary of war and secretary of state rolled into one—with an occupying army at his fingertips. For the past two days American planes had been landing every five minutes, disgorging troops at the rate of 10,000 a day. The total humiliation of Japan, the full invasion, was now a fact.

At 10:30 a very nervous Shigemitsu was ushered into a temporary conference room in the New Grand Hotel in Yokohama. Upon meeting the supreme commander he was “joyfully surprised” by MacArthur's “graciousness.” For more than an hour they talked, and it became apparent that their differences were more of perception than of content. Issuing a directive “to the People of Japan,” argued Shigemitsu, would undermine people's confidence in the Japanese government and lead to domestic disorder. No one was questioning the ultimate authority of the conquering power, and it was the government's full intention to follow SCAP's wishes, but to do so and be abjectly humiliated was neither reasonable nor acceptable.

Basically what Shigemitsu was pleading for was that the Japanese government be given a chance to prove its worth as an obedient supplicant. “Should the government fail to fulfill its duties, or should the occupation authorities feel the government's policies are unsatisfactory,” he promised MacArthur, “then direct orders could be issued by occupation officials.” MacArthur responded by assuring the Japanese foreign minister that he had no intention of “destroying the nation or making slaves of the Japanese people.” The purpose of the occupation was “to assist Japan in surmounting its difficulties, and if the government showed ‘good faith,' problems could be solved easily.”

In the room with the two men and an interpreter was MacArthur's chief of staff. MacArthur turned to his aide and ordered the three directives to be scrapped.

 

UPON ARRIVING AT
the American Embassy in Tokyo five days later, MacArthur ordered the American colors to be raised. “General Eichelberger, have our country's flag unfurled, and in Tokyo's sun let it wave in its full glory as a symbol of hope for the oppressed and as a harbinger of victory for the right.” Standing rigidly at attention in front of the flagpole were two men. As the flag reached the top, they saluted, tears coming to their eyes, so powerful was the moment.

“Well, Bill . . . ,” said MacArthur.

“We really did it,” said Admiral Halsey.

Going inside the building for the first time, MacArthur saw a big portrait of George Washington on the wall: “We are home now,” he said. Seeing the portrait of the great American general, he reflected later, “moved me more than I can say.”