Supreme Commander (3 page)

Fortunately the head of the four-thousand-man Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, Col. Sidney Mashbir, had caught it and gone to his boss, General Willoughby. Willoughby, German-born and a master of several languages, immediately set up a meeting for Mashbir to see MacArthur. They spent an hour together, discussing the distinctions between “temporal power” and “spiritual power” and how the emperor fitted in. At the end of the meeting MacArthur had given Mashbir complete authority to rewrite the surrender document to conform to Japanese usage, and closed the meeting with the words: “If at any time you feel that there is anything I should know, I want you to come straight to me with it. Don't hesitate.” That's how MacArthur ran his organization: If someone had a serious problem, come straight to him.

MacArthur was no lawyer, but he had the brains of a good one. In fact, if he hadn't admired his father enough to follow in his footsteps and become a general, his choice of career would have been law. The legal implications of this translation error may have escaped the non-lawyer or the incompetent one, but they didn't escape MacArthur. Someone in Washington had screwed up, big-time. Had the surrender documents contained language improperly prepared under Japanese law, then at any time in the future the Japanese government could have said the surrender was invalid. . . .

It was all a page out of Santayana, about people not remembering the past being condemned to repeat it. Wasn't this exactly how the Nazis had justified themselves: by repudiating the legality of the Treaty of Versailles? Their argument, which had merit, was that Germany—technically speaking—had never surrendered, which in turn meant that the reparations demands had no legal standing and therefore were improper.

Looking out the window and far off into the distance, where Japan must be, he had his fingers crossed, hoping that the Eighth Army under General Eichelberger had everything under control. How ironic that his top general in Japan was the holder of two medals from the Japanese government: the Imperial Order of Meiji, aka the Order of the Rising Sun, and the Order of the Sacred Treasure. As a member of the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia in 1919–20, Eichelberger had been awarded these medals for helping the Japanese fight the Bolsheviks. Imagine what the Japanese would think if he were to wear these medals on his army uniform now!

MacArthur knew the Japanese were playing possum. They had been ordered to lay down their arms, and every report from his commanders on the ground had confirmed this. Even Eichelberger said so. But he knew Eichelberger well enough to know that Eichelberger slept with one eye open. Especially when it came to the Japanese. Eichelberger understood the Japanese militarists better than anyone in America: He had served with them for two and a half years in Siberia and had not come home brimming with affection. Quite the contrary; after watching the Japanese surprise everyone by bringing in 125,000 men instead of 12,000, Eichelberger had warned his superiors in Washington, his two Japanese medals notwithstanding: “The Japanese High Command . . . managed to achieve for itself a record of complete perfidy, of the blackest and most heinous double-dealing.”

Can't get more blunt than that.

MacArthur reflected on the report he had received from Col. Charles Tench, his aide who had led the fleet of planes that landed on August 26 to prepare the Atsugi airstrip for MacArthur's arrival on August 30. One of the people greeting Tench was a Russian: “I am Commander Anatoliy Rodionov, Naval Attaché of the Soviet Union in Japan. Welcome.” What the heck were the Russians doing here? Outrageous, these Russians, having declared war only one day after the bombing of Nagasaki, already trying to grab a piece of the victor's spoils. MacArthur never liked them anyway. Now he loathed them. Then to top it all off, they had handed Tench a letter from Jacob Malik, Russian ambassador to Japan, to be delivered to MacArthur, asking for passes to the surrender ceremonies. What nerve!

MacArthur had tossed the letter aside. Many people back in Washington may have been pleased that the Russians were joining the war against Japan; MacArthur was not one of them. The Russians weren't needed, they were just crashing the victory party.

MacArthur had good reason to abhor the Russians. Ostensible allies in the war against Germany, they had almost cost MacArthur his life. In October 1944, a senior official in the Russian Foreign Ministry had tipped off the Japanese ambassador in Moscow that the American forces were getting ready to attack in the Philippines. Four days later a top Japanese general and the country's legendary hero, Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, arrived in Manila. Every bit as arrogant and self-confident as MacArthur, Yamashita electrified everyone by declaring that he was going to teach MacArthur a lesson and dictate surrender terms in the Philippines.

In due course MacArthur would have the immense pleasure of dealing with the butcher Yamashita, but he would never forgive the Russians for having put this general against him, thus causing many needless American deaths.

MacArthur was not a man who, once he made a decision or developed a plan, was racked with self-doubts or what-ifs. He had to be pleased with himself that day, having just received a cable from Secretary of War Stimson calling him the “principal architect” of the Pacific victory and citing him for “brilliant planning” and an “enterprise [that] has grown in scope and boldness.”
Boldness
, he liked that word. His plan to land in Japan and take it over was a daring one: to hit his first area of occupation with sizable forces and pour men in rapidly behind the first troops. The Japanese would have no room for surprise maneuvers. In keeping with his tactics of what the
New York Times
would soon tout as his “fool-proof”occupation, he would establish a beachhead and seal off Tokyo and annex the great port of Yokohama, without actually taking over Tokyo. This had now been done. Next, he would extend his lines to take in Tokyo and adjacent areas. Then, and only then, would he gradually fan out, as more divisions came ashore to take over all of Honshu Island.

War Department officials had warned him to be completely on guard against Japanese treachery. Yes, that was a serious possibility, but MacArthur was betting on another trick up his sleeve, a psychological one. The Japanese had yet to receive the full details of American surrender terms. Everything was very much up in the air, meaning there was nothing specific for Japanese militarists to focus their rancor on. Everyone in Japan was waiting to see what MacArthur would do. He had, if you could call it that, a grace period. By the time it expired, MacArthur would have so many troops in Japan that the Japanese would realize the futility of last-ditch resistance.

But for this plan to work it was essential that this landing at Atsugi go off perfectly.

Corncob pipe in hand, he spent forty minutes of the three-hour flight walking up and down the aisle, deep in thought. Speaking out to his fellow generals, he astonished them by giving a lecture and announcing his major priorities for the occupation—as if he had no concern about kamikazes and assassins waiting for them in Japan:

First destroy the military power  . . .

Then build the structure of representative government  . . .

Enfranchise the women  . . .

Free the political prisoners  . . .

Liberate the farmers  . . .

Establish a free labor movement  . . .

Encourage a free economy  . . .

Abolish police oppression  . . .

Develop a free and responsible press  . . .

Liberalize education  . . .

Decentralize the political power.

That was it: eleven priorities. Eleven major tasks to accomplish, with the entire world watching. From the tone of his voice, everyone on the plane knew he was not shooting the breeze or thumping his chest, he was dead serious. He had a plan. He was thoroughly prepared.

They were impressed—as MacArthur wanted them to be. In his
Reminiscences
he wrote: “From the moment of my appointment as supreme commander, I had formulated the policies I intended to follow, implementing them through the Emperor and the machinery of the imperial government.”

Had he really? As was often the case with MacArthur, he was guilty of exaggeration. The day before, he had received via military radio from Washington the fifth draft of
Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan
, a policy document under development for more than a year. What MacArthur had actually done was take a poorly written document and translate its key points into language everyone could understand.

Helping people better understand Washington government memorandums is all well and good, but as a general on a dangerous mission, MacArthur's major objective was to ensure the safety of his people and himself. He couldn't admit it, but he had good reason to be as terrified as his men about the security at Atsugi. Had the Japanese, as ordered, subdued the thousands of kamikaze pilots and removed the propellers from all the airplanes? He knew the country they were flying into was heavily armed, with 2.2 million soldiers at beck and call. More specifically he was flying directly into the dragon's mouth, the headquarters of the so-called Divine Wind Squadrons. He had only 4,000 American troops in the immediate area of Atsugi; the Japanese had more than 300,000. Up until two days before, diehard Japanese pilots had been dropping leaflets over the cities and countryside, urging the people to carry on the fight. “Resist with tooth and nail!” . . . “Destroy MacArthur's plane!” . . . “The American army devils are coming!” . . . “Send the women and children to the mountains!” The country was swarming with disgruntled militarists and terrorists for whom killing was an act of honor. He, Douglas MacArthur, was the “Most Wanted Man” in this nation; it would take only a single bullet. And he was not the only one. Already, on August 15, there had been an attack by thirty-two young Japanese officers on the emperor's palace after the emperor had made his concession statement. They claimed he was not the real Hirohito and that his radio announcement was a fake masterminded by the Americans.
*
They killed the commanding general of the Imperial Guard Division, and set fire to and machine-gunned the home of the prime minister, Kantaro Suzuki. By the time the bloodbath was over, all thirty-two rebels and six guards were dead. American troops were now in Atsugi and Yokohama, but not yet in Tokyo; they had been warned by the Japanese army that it needed a few more days to clean up the city and ensure there were no renegades running around. In the meantime another group of ultranationalists, belonging to the Black Dragon Society, had made two attempts to assassinate the prime minister. When those failed, they tried to kill the head of the Privy Council (an advisory board to the emperor). When would this all end? The only comfort for MacArthur was that the U.S. Navy under Admiral Halsey had an armada offshore consisting of twelve American battleships, two British battleships, and seventeen aircraft carriers with a hundred-plus planes to darken the sky—enough firepower to decimate the Japanese into oblivion should they try any funny business at Atsugi.

Still, all it takes to start complete mayhem—and a full-scale invasion—is one lunatic with a gun or a grenade. It was a chance he would have to take. All his life he had taken risks on the battlefield and never gotten hit. Worry would do him no good, he must get ready for the big moment, so he finally took a nap. He was the only one. None of the other generals and officers on the plane dared think of sleep, they were so uptight and racked with tension and fear.

Down on land the Japanese were just as nervous as the men in the plane. Never in twelve hundred years had Japan been invaded. Who knew what these Americans would do? In Gifu City, the mayor ordered all girls aged fifteen to twenty-five to flee into the mountains to avoid American soldiers. At several Japanese companies such as Kanto Kyogo and Nakajimo Aircraft, cyanide capsules were being handed out to female workers should American soldiers try to rape them.

Only an incurable romantic would do what MacArthur was doing, descending unarmed onto a kamikaze airfield like a swashbuckling Errol Flynn. Reckless and foolhardy? At the age of twenty-five, MacArthur had visited Japan as aide to his father, a prominent general and Medal of Honor recipient (like his son was to become).
*
At the 1905 Battle of Mukden, where 140,000 men were killed in the biggest land battle of the Russo-Japanese War, MacArthur had watched a Japanese battalion trying five times to take a Russian position. Like an artist impelled to seize the brush of a fumbling student, MacArthur couldn't bear watching it anymore: He took command of the (undoubtedly startled) Japanese battalion and led it by a new route to capture the Russian battery on top of the hill. Had he been Japanese, he would have gotten a medal.

Now he was being equally reckless, perhaps? He did not think so, based on his reading of the emperor's hold over the Japanese people. MacArthur had met the emperor at the time, Hirohito's grandfather Mutsuhito, and written: “I met all the great Japanese commanders: Oyama, Kuroki, Nogi, and the brilliant Admiral Heihachiro Togo—those grim, taciturn, aloof men of iron character and unshakeable purpose. It was here that I first encountered the boldness and courage of the Nipponese soldier. His almost fanatical belief in and reverence for his Emperor impressed me indelibly.”

What most impressed MacArthur was a particular small incident. A Japanese general was ordering his soldiers to take pills every four hours to fight a battlefield sickness. MacArthur teased the general, saying that his Japanese soldiers wouldn't take the pills any more than American GIs would, they'd throw the capsules into the first ditch. The Japanese general was offended: “My soldiers will never do that. You wait and see. Orders will be carried out.”

They weren't. The Japanese soldiers threw away the pills, happy to be alive. Frustrated, the Japanese general issued a new order: “The Emperor requests that each soldier take one capsule every four hours.”