AMERICANS have good reason to be proud of their part in the administration of Japan since VJ-Day. The policy of the United States was laid down in the State-War-Navy directive which was transmitted by radio on August 29, and it has been administered with skill by General MacArthur. The excellent grounds for such pride have often been obscured by partisan praise and criticism in the American press and on the radio, and few people have known enough about Japanese culture to be sure whether a given policy was desirable or undesirable.
The great issue at the time of Japan’s surrender was the nature of the occupation. Were the victors to use the existing government, even the Emperor, or was it to be liquidated? Was there to be a town-by-town, province-by-province administration, with Military Government officers of the United States in command? The pattern in Italy and Germany had been to set up local A.M.G. headquarters as integral parts of the combat forces, and to place authority for local domestic matters in the hands of the Allied administrators. On VJ-Day, those in charge of A.M.G. in the Pacific still expected to institute such a rule in Japan. The Japanese also did not know what responsibility for their own affairs they would be allowed to retain. The Potsdam Proclamation had stated only that ‘points in Japanese territory to be designated by the Allies shall be occupied to secure the basic objectives we are here setting forth,’ and that there must be eliminated for all time ‘the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest.’
The State-War-Navy directive to General MacArthur embodied a great decision on these matters, a decision which General MacArthur’s Headquarters fully supported. The Japanese were to be responsible for the administration and reconstruction of their country. ‘The Supreme Commander will exercise his authority through Japanese governmental machinery and agencies, including the Emperor, to the extent that this satisfactorily furthers United States objectives. The Japanese government will be permitted, under his instructions (General MacArthur’s), to exercise the normal powers of government in matters of domestic administration.’ General MacArthur’s administration of Japan is, therefore, quite unlike that of Germany or Italy. It is exclusively a headquarters organization, utilizing Japanese officialdom from top to bottom. It addresses its communications to the Imperial Japanese Government, not to the Japanese people or to the residents of some town or province. Its business is to state goals for the Japanese government to work toward. If a Japanese Minister believes them impossible, he can offer to resign, but, if his case is good, he may get the directive modified.
This kind of administration was a bold move. The advantages of this policy from the point of view of the United States are clear enough. As General Hilldring said at the time:
The advantages which are gained through the utilization of the national government are enormous. If there were no Japanese Government available for our use, we would have to operate directly the whole complicated machine required for the administration of a country of seventy million people. These people differ from us in language, customs, and attitudes. By cleaning up and using the Japanese Government machinery as a tool we are saving our time and our manpower and our resources. In other words, we are requiring the Japanese to do their own house-cleaning, but we are providing the specifications.
When this directive was being drawn up in Washington, however, there were still many Americans who feared that the Japanese would be sullen and hostile, a nation of watchful avengers who might sabotage any peaceful program. These fears did not prove to be justified. And the reasons lay in the curious culture of Japan more than in any universal truths about defeated nations or politics or economics. Probably among no other peoples would a policy of good faith have paid off as well as it did in Japan. In Japanese eyes it removed from the stark fact of defeat the symbols of humiliation and challenged them to put into effect a new national policy, acceptance of which was possible precisely because of the culturally conditioned character of the Japanese.
In the United States we have argued endlessly about hard and soft peace terms. The real issue is not between hard and soft. The problem is to use that amount of hardness, no more and no less, which will break up old and dangerous patterns of aggressiveness and set new goals. The means to be chosen depend on the character of the people and upon the traditional social order of the nation in question. Prussian authoritarianism, embedded as it is in the family and in the daily civic life, makes necessary certain kinds of peace terms for Germany. Wise peace directives would differ from those for Japan. Germans do not regard themselves, like the Japanese, as debtors to the world and to the ages. They strive, not to repay an incalculable debt, but to avoid being victims. The father is an authoritarian figure, and, like any other person who has superior status, it is he who, as the phrase is, ‘enforces respect.’ It is he who feels himself threatened if he does not get it.
In German life each generation of sons revolt in adolescence against their authoritarian fathers and then regard themselves as surrendering finally at adulthood to a drab and unexciting life which they identify as that of their parents. The high point of existence remains, for life, those years of the Sturm und Drang of adolescent rebellion.