Finn Richard B. Winners in Peace. MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan

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Winners in Peace

MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan

Richard B. Finn

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

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ILLUSTRATIONS

(Illustrations follow page 209 )

l. Autographed photograph of General Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito at their first

meeting

2. Aerial photograph of Hiroshima, December 22, 1945

3. MacArthur relaxing

4. MacArthur greeting John Foster Dulles on his first trip to Japan

5. Dulles, Ambassador W. J. Sebald, and Prime Minister Yoshida

6. Yoshida signing the peace treaty, as his Japanese co-signers look on

7. Yoshida signing the security treaty

8. Yoshida's calligraphy

9. MacArthur and Yoshida—two old friends

10. Yoshida in retirement

ABBREVIATONS

ACJ Allied Council for Japan (Allies)

ANZUS Australia-New Zealand-United States

BCOF British Commonwealth Occupation Force

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

CIE Civil Information and Education Section (SCAP)

CINC commander in chief

CINCAFPAC commander in chief, Army Force Pacific

CINCFE commander in chief, Far East

CIS Civil Intelligence Section (SCAP)

CIU Congress of Industrial Unions (Sambetsu Kaigi)

CLKL Kades letter of Jan. 18, 1987, to author

CLM Canadian Liaison Mission (Tokyo)

CLO Central Liaison Office (Japan)

COS chief of staff (SCAP and FEC)

DA Department of the Army

desp. despatch

DCOS deputy chief of staff

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DOS Department of State

DOSBDepartment of State Bulletin

DS Diplomatic Section (SCAP)

EROA Economic Rehabilitation of Occupied Areas (United States)

ESB Economic Stabilization Board (Japan)

ESP economic stabilization program

ESS Economic and Scientific Section (SCAP)

FDR Franklin D. Roosevelt

FEAC Far Eastern Advisory Commission (Allies)

FEC Far Eastern Commission (Allies)

FEC Far East Command (U.S. military)

FO Foreign Office

FRUSForeign Relations of the United States

FY fiscal year

G-2 Intelligence Section (GHQ)

GARIOA Government and Relief in Occupied Areas (United States)

GHQ General Headquarters

GPO Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. (United States)

GS Government Section (SCAP)

HCLC Holding Company Liquidation Commission (Japan)

HSTL Harry S Truman Library, Independence, Missouri

ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions

IMTFE International Military Tribunal for the Far East

Int. interview

IRAA Imperial Rule Assistance Association

JCP Japan Communist Party

JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff (U.S. military)

― xv ―

JERC Japanese Educational Reform Council

JFL Japan Federation of Labor (Nihon Rodo Kumiai Sodomei)

JNR Japan National Railways

JSP Japan Socialist Party

JWC Justin Williams Collection, McKeldin Library, University of Maryland, College Park,

Maryland

KJKaiso junen (Memories of ten years), by Yoshida Shigeru

ltr(s). letter(s)

MITI Ministry of International Trade and Industry

MMA MacArthur Memorial Archives, Norfolk, Virginia

MP military police (U.S. military)

NAC National Advisory Council (United States)

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NDLT National Diet Library, Tokyo

NL Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland

NPR National Police Reserve (Japan)

NPSL National Public Service Law (Japan)

NRAS National Records/Archives, Suitland, Maryland

NRAW National Records/Archives, Washington, D.C.

NSC National Security Council (United States)

NYTNew York Times

POLAD political adviser (SCAP)

PPS policy planning staff (United States)

PRC People's Republic of China

PRJThe Political Reorientation of Japan (United States)

RFB Reconstruction Finance Bank

RG Record Group

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RLED Robert L. Eichelberger Diary, Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

ROC Republic of China (Taiwan)

ROK Republic of Korea (South Korea)

SANACC State-Army-Navy-Air Coordinating Committee (United States)

SCAP supreme commander for the Allied powers

SCAPIN SCAP instruction

SDSebald Diary , U.S. Naval Academy, Nimitz Library, Annapolis, Maryland

Shoden Showa Denko Company

SWNCC State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (United States)

tel(s). telegram(s)

TIASU.S. Treaties and Other International Agreements

UKLM United Kingdom Liaison Mission

USMCR United States Marine Corps Reserve

YMYoshida Memoirs

― xvii ―

INTRODUCTION

I spent five years in Japan during the American occupation. I went there first in October 1945,

one month after Japan's surrender, as a naval officer specializing in the Japanese language and

spent three months with a team investigating war damage. I returned in 1947 as a fledgling

diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service. My role was modest, handling legal and diplomatic matters

in what we called "MacArthur's State Department," the Diplomatic Section of SCAP, the

headquarters of the supreme commander for the Allied powers. I had the opportunity to see

much of the country and take part in some of the discussions and planning that led to the San

Francisco peace settlement of 1951.

By the time I returned to Washington in 1954, most of the war damage I had seen in Japan in

1945 had been repaired. The terrible shortages in the big cities of food, housing, and jobs had

been greatly alleviated. The Japanese were struggling to get their living standard and industrial

production back up to prewar levels. Nevertheless, despite the economic boost provided by the

Korean War, most Americans thought Japan had little hope of developing a self-supporting

economy and would probably require huge amounts of foreign assistance for years to come.

They also had little doubt that the new constitution imposed by SCAP in 1946 would be quickly

revised and that many of the political and economic changes instituted during the occupation

would be overturned.

Fifteen years later, in 1969, after diplomatic assignments in other

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parts of the world, I became director of Japanese affairs in the State Department. My main task

was to orchestrate the planning of the agencies in Washington for the return of Okinawa to

Japanese control, an act that many Japanese and Americans considered the final step in winding

up the war between our two countries. By that time we who had been so gloomy about Japan's

future could see how wrong we had been. Our economic forecasts were farthest from the mark

but not much worse than our predictions of political reaction. The London Economist , in an eye-

opening report in 1962, had been among the first to tell the world about Japan's stunning rise as

an economic power.[1] Soon people began to worry that Japan was too strong.

I have thought a lot in recent years about Japan's remarkable transformation and have read many

explanations of how it came about. To me several aspects of the occupation have seemed

particularly worth exploring. The role of the Japanese, especially of their leaders in government

and business and above all of Yoshida Shigeru, who was prime minister for two-thirds of the

occupation, has not received much attention in this country. In Japan, Yoshida has gradually

risen from obscurity and taken on luster as a leader who stood up to General Douglas

MacArthur, the supreme Allied commander, and was able to mitigate the harsher features of the

occupation and pave the way for a favorable peace settlement. Yoshida is now generally

considered Japan's outstanding prime minister of the postwar era,[2] although he has his

detractors, as does MacArthur.

The general was, of course, the star actor in the occupation drama. But his deeds in Japan have

been exaggerated by many including himself, distorted by the cult of personality he helped

create, and diminished by his debacle in the Korean War. He is no longer seen as a figure of

heroic proportions. Yet his role in Japan and his relationship with Yoshida, a kind of partnership

between a senior and a junior, merit closer study. Yoshida was much more than a passive

recipient of occupation orders. He acted as a filter through which important policies and orders

passed, on occasion he offered advice about how problems should be handled, and he managed

key government operations designed to carry out SCAP directives.

The two men had some important characteristics in common. When the occupation began, both

were in their midsixties. Both had taken part in the rise of their countries to world influence early

in the century. Both were elitist and fiercely independent. Both were considered by many of their

contemporaries to be arrogant and highly conservative in

― xix ―

their political outlook. Both were called on during the occupation to take actions they found

distasteful. Both were firm supporters of Japan's imperial institution. MacArthur believed

strongly in a powerful world role for the United States. Yoshida, who was once described as

having "the outlook of imperial Japan," never wavered in the conviction that his country had an

important part to play.[3]

Someone once compared Yoshida to Winston Churchill, and Yoshi-da replied, "Yes, but made in

Japan."[4] Like the British wartime leader, Yoshida did not see it as his duty to preside over the

wholesale liquidation of Japanese institutions and society. He did not hide his view that many

actions by the occupation were "excessive." And like the postwar leader of West Germany,

Konrad Adenauer, he acquired skill in blunting the blows of the occupiers.

The United States and Japan had been fierce rivals for a generation and bitter enemies during

four years of war. Japan suffered enormous damage and America very little. In 1945 the United

States was the most powerful nation on earth, and Japan was one of the weakest. The United

States was less than two hundred years old, confident of its power and the strength of its open

society and democratic institutions. Japan was more than fifteen hundred years old, a hierarchical

society that had been isolated for centuries and that lacked much knowledge of the outside world

even after two generations of rapid modernization. Defeat had shaken the morale of its people

and undermined their sense of national purpose.

In the aftermath of the war, it became the task of Japanese and Americans to compose the

profound differences in culture and outlook that separated their two countries and to build out of

the carnage of war a new and enduring relationship. The occupation was one of the rare

occasions in history when a modern industrial state had virtually unchallenged power to direct

the destiny of another major modern state for a lengthy period, in this case eighty months. An

American authority has said, "The Allied Occupation of Japan was perhaps the single most

exhaustively planned operation of massive and externally directed change in world history."[5]

How the two nations went about this, and how they were able to turn a Pacific rivalry into a

Pacific friendship, is the basic story that needs to be told about the occupation.

A huge literature already exists on virtually all facets of that six and one-half year period of U.S.

control. Yet very few books, either in English or in Japanese, have studied it from start to finish.

Few have looked at all aspects of the occupation. I have tried to examine the

― xx ―

important sources of information. I have talked to nearly one hundred persons who participated

in or were close observers of the occupation. I have also familiarized myself with what writers in

both countries have had to say about it. Although MacArthur's star burns less brightly than

before, most Americans see the results of the occupation as almost exclusively the product of

American initiatives and efforts. Japanese scholars, in their intensive research on the occupation,

have been able to uncover a number of areas in which Japanese made valuable contributions to

occupation reforms and even "Japanized" some of the changes made by Americans, as in

drawing up the constitution. Relatively little attention is given by Americans or Japanese to the

punitive aspect of the occupation, such as the war crimes trials or the "purges" of officials and

business leaders; Japanese generally admit to some brutal actions during the war but see the

atomic bomb as equally barbarous.

Agreement is widespread that the goals of both countries shifted during the occupation. But there

is no consensus on the causes or extent of this change. That Japan's recovery became an

American goal of equal prominence with reform is generally accepted. But one school of

observers goes farther and sees U.S. policy as taking a "reverse course" halfway through the

occupation; the term has no agreed meaning, but one formulation calls it "the shift of occupation

priorities from democratization of a former enemy to reconstruction of a future cold-war ally."[6]

Some adherents to this school see the reverse course as a precursor of the policies that led some

years later to U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

That the cold war was a factor in the U.S. decision to help rebuild Japan is undeniable.

Reconstruction was, of course, something all Japanese wanted. It is likewise undeniable that

from an American point of view, world conditions were rapidly deteriorating in the late 1940s, as

exemplified by Mao Zedong's victories in China and the Soviet blockade of Berlin; the Allied

nations virtually terminated their occupation of western Germany in 1949, and it was only

natural to expect significant shifts of U.S. policy toward Japan. In MacArthur's view the reform

program was virtually completed by 1948. Japanese attitudes were also changing at the same

time. The Japanese had had enough reform and tinkering with their institutions and sought refuge

in a conservative government that promised more stability and economic improvement.

The Japanese press was the first to write about reverse course. This happened just before the

occupation ended in 1952, when the press criticized the government for talking about modifying

some of the

― xxi ―

occupation reforms. Debates like this had gone on in Japan for years. Even before World War II

some writers claimed that Japan was dominated by "feudal survivals," like the imperial system,

while others asserted the country had sufficiently reformed these old-fashioned institutions to be

on the way to "modernization." After World War II one camp said feudal and nationalist

influences were "rooted" in Japan, while others claimed Japan's militarist plunge in the 193 Os

was merely a kind of historical discontinuity or "stumble" that had enabled the nationalists to

seize power and lead the nation to war. More recently, a few critics have argued that a clique of

bureaucrats, politicians, and business leaders have been able to manipulate the political "system"

to their advantage.

While noting these interpretations, I have tried to write a book that is accurate in its description

of events and balanced in its judgments, so that those reading it will see how Americans and

Japanese worked together and how close they came, despite the inevitable shifts and changes

over a six and one-half year period, to bringing about a liberal democracy and a self-supporting

economy in Japan. And the paradox will be evident that two men who had a relatively narrow

concept of democracy and a considerable attachment to traditional values nevertheless played

key roles in overseeing this effort. They were carried along by forces they could neither resist

nor control.

In the decade that I have worked on this book, I have had help from many people and

institutions. I want to thank in particular Professor Amakawa Akira, Dr. Tsuru Shigeto, Professor

Sodei Rinjiro, Professor Takemae Eiji, Suzuki Gengo, and Kojima Noboru in Japan, as well as

Charles Kades, W. J. Sebald, Ezra Vogel, Professor Marleen Mayo, Frank Joseph Shulman, and

Justin Williams, Sr., among many others, in the United States. I made extensive use of the

resources of the National Diet Library and the Yoshida Foundation in Japan, the National

Archives in Washington, and the MacArthur Memorial Foundation in Norfolk, Virginia. I relied

heavily on two dedicated archivists, Edward J. Boone, Jr., in Norfolk and John Taylor in

Washington. I owe special thanks to my daughter Allison for her editorial advice and to Jean and

Brad Coolidge and Vicki and Cromwell Riches for the extensive help they gave me from their

libraries on the occupation period.

― 1 ―

PART I

ENEMIES FACE TO FACE

On August 8, 1945, two days after an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima,

General Douglas MacArthur said to news correspondent Theodore White, "Wars are over,

White, wars are over. There will never be another war. Men like me are obsolete. There can't be

any more wars."[1] This inspiration seems to have come on MacArthur, a lifelong warrior, like a

flash of light. It remained with him for a long time and had a profound effect on his thinking.

The bombing of Hiroshima was an awesome event. A 4-ton bomb containing uranium 235 was

detonated over Japan's seventh largest city, an important regional and military center with a

population of 400,000. The most powerful weapon in history, its explosive force equaled 12.5

kilotons of TNT, the same as a conventional bombload of two thousand B-29s. It destroyed 90

percent of the city. Within the next four months probably between 90,000 and 100,000 persons

died as a result, including a dozen or so American prisoners of war and thousands of imported

Korean workers. Many more Japanese died thereafter from injuries directly attributable to the

bomb.[2]

Two days later the Soviet Union, in a speedup of its schedule, declared war on Japan and

attacked Imperial Army forces in Manchuria and Korea. The day after, August 9, a second

atomic bomb, of 4.5 tons and made of plutonium 239, was dropped on Nagasaki, with an

explosive force of 22 kilotons of TNT. Within a month between 60,000 and 70,000 people died

as a result. Ironically, the bomb was dropped about

― 2 ―

two miles off target when the plane was getting low on fuel and detonated not far from the

Urakami Cathedral, a large Roman Catholic church. The military necessity of dropping a second

atomic bomb has become one of the more debated issues of World War II.

Yet Japan was not ready to surrender. It was a nation with a long and proud history of military

valor. This samurai tradition, sometimes called the "spirit of Yamato," had not disappeared

during a century of modernization. The conflict in the Pacific had been tough and brutal, aptly

described as a "war without mercy," but the imperial forces had fought without surrender in a

series of bloody battles in the western Pacific. Japanese leaders had had great difficulty in

deciding how to react to the Potsdam Declaration issued in Germany by the major Allied powers

on July 26, 1945, calling on Japan to proclaim the unconditional surrender of its armed forces or

face "prompt and utter destruction." Prime Minister Suzuki Kantaro, an octogenarian retired

admiral and hero of the Russo-Japanese War, decided after a tense debate with his advisers that

Japan would "ignore" the Allied statement. The word he used, mokusatsu , somehow got into the

press the next day. The New York Times reported that Japan "formally rejected the Allied

declaration."[3]

But staggered by the cataclysmic blows received during the month of August, Japan's leaders had

to choose between vague Allied peace terms that might be a disaster for the nation and

continuation of a war Japan could not win. The Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, a

six-member body of senior officials created a year earlier to make defense policies, met on

August 9 to decide what to do.[4] Three of its members, all military men, were determined to

fight on until one final "decisive battle" would show both sides the futility of further combat and

compel them to agree to negotiate an armistice. But the events of August made even these ardent

warriors waver. They had no defense against this terrible new American weapon, although in the

confusing period after the bombing of Hiroshima very few people knew what had hit them. The

USSR's entry into the war wiped out the last hope of enlisting Soviet mediation and dividing the

Allies. The council, and the cabinet that met soon afterward, were hopelessly deadlocked after

tense meetings that lasted much of the day. In desperation the prime minister requested another

meeting that night to put the issue directly to the emperor, an action without precedent in

Japanese history.[5]

Despite General MacArthur's flash of inspiration, World War II was

― 3 ―

not over. Nor could it be said—yet—that Japan was ready to give up, despite all its battle losses

in the Pacific, the fearful pounding from the air it had been undergoing, the Allied peace offer,

two atomic bombs, and Soviet attacks on the outposts of its empire.

― 5 ―

Chapter 1

Tense Beginnings

World War II ended when the emperor decided that Japan should accept the offer of terms made

by the Allied powers. Two gozen kaigi , "meetings with the emperor," were required before the

bitter division in the Supreme War Council could be bridged. In this unique crisis, only the

emperor could make the decision. And only he had the authority to ensure that it would be

carried out. At the first meeting the emperor said, "I cannot bear to see my innocent people suffer

any longer." He added that he did not believe his armed forces could repel an invasion. He felt

regret for all those who had died in the war and said it would be "unbearable" to see "the loyal

fighting men of Japan disarmed" and some "punished as instigators of the war."[1]

After this meeting on the night of August 9, the Japanese government sent a note to the United

States stating that it accepted the Potsdam Declaration on the understanding that acceptance

would not prejudice "the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler." The United States

replied artfully that "the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state

shall be subject to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, who will take such steps as

he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms." At the second meeting on August 14, the

emperor said he thought the U.S. response was "evidence of the peaceful and friendly intentions

of the enemy" and reiterated that he could "not endure the thought of letting my people suffer

any longer."[2] At this point the United States was intensifying the bombing of Tokyo.

― 6 ―

The Japanese then sent a reply accepting the Potsdam terms and giving assurance that they

would carry out the surrender arrangements. President Harry S Truman announced the same day

that he considered the reply "a full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, which specifies the

unconditional surrender of Japan."[3]

The Japanese people heard the voice of their emperor for the first time when he broadcast to the

nation on August 15. Despite the stilted court language used by the man known as Tenno to his

subjects and as Hirohito to the outside world, his meaning was unmistakable. Speaking of the

Allied powers' statement at Potsdam, he said, "Our Empire accepts the provisions of their joint

declaration." He did not use the word surrender . He added, perhaps optimistically, that Japan

had "been able to safeguard and maintain the structure of the imperial state.[4]

The willingness of the Japanese to respond to "the voice of the crane" by abandoning a policy of

militant nationalism and calmly facing an unknown and frightening future was strikingly

illustrated that day.[5] Historians debate what caused Japan to surrender, but the intervention of

the emperor was crucial. Nevertheless, despite all Japan's troubles, including the shock of the

atomic bomb, the emperor's intervention would probably not have been effective or even

possible before August 10. After his death in 1989 the Tenno became known as Emperor Showa,

meaning "enlightened peace," a title that his deeds in 1945 and afterward may well justify.

A new cabinet was soon organized, headed by Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko, an uncle-in-law of

the emperor and. a career army officer. The cabinet's greatest concern was that the armed forces

might not obey the emperor's cease-fire order of August 16. Hotheaded rightists might try to

seize control of the government, or army forces on the Asian mainland might decide to fight on.

But the authority of the imperial order prevailed, and after a few tense days and a number of

suicides by recalcitrant rightists or military men carrying out the code of loyalty to ,the throne,

compliance was complete throughout the empire.[6]

General MacArthur was at his headquarters in Manila when the war ended. He had been told

officially on August 15, 1945, that he would be named supreme commander for the Allied

powers to receive the Japanese surrender and command the Allied forces of occupation. He did

not return to Washington or receive any special briefing for his new assignment.

Yoshida Shigeru, who had retired from the diplomatic service in 1939, was living at his country

home in Oiso, thirty-five miles south-

― 7 ―

west of Tokyo, at that time. He was not feeling well, but he was not so sick that he could not get

up to Tokyo to celebrate with his friend Prince Konoe Fumimaro. Yoshida, who enjoyed parties

and whiskey, got so tipsy that he fell asleep and missed his stop on the train back home.[7]

The first U.S. forces landed in Japan on August 28, two weeks after the imperial pronouncement.

That interval provided a respite for both sides, giving time for emotions to simmer down and for

future steps to be planned. A sixteen-member Japanese delegation went to Manila on August 19-

20 to receive advance copies of the surrender documents and work out details for the ceremony.

The businesslike discussions covered all the necessary ground in two meetings. The Americans

were firm, but, according to one of the Japanese, they were "gentlemen. "[8]

MacArthur had decided that he would go to Japan at an early time, just as he had accompanied

his invading forces during his campaigns in the Southwest Pacific. "To prevent regrettable

incidents," the Japanese wanted a longer delay than MacArthur would accept. Although staff

members worried about his security, they finally reached a compromise with the Japanese on a

three-day delay in the arrival of the advance party—to August 26, with the general to come in on

August 28.[9]

Providentially, a typhoon blew up on August 22, and the Americans decided to wait two more

days. On August 28 the advance group of 146 communications and engineering specialists

landed at Atsugi air base, thirty miles southwest of Tokyo, to make final arrangements for the

arrival of the main elements. Two days later, on August 30, U.S. troops arrived in force both at

Atsugi and at the big naval base of Yokosuka, fifteen miles east of Atsugi. Every four minutes

another big transport plane arrived and unloaded troops and equipment. When MacArthur came