The Harvest

The U.S. was the first nation to learn how to wring surrender from Japan. Now, as the principal victor, the U.S. must also:

P: Occupy a country whose fanatical army of several millions is undefeated.

P: Make a god obey orders.

P: Instill democracy and international cooperation in a people whose political, economic and religious institutions have long worked in the opposite direction.

P: Reorganize for peace an economy built around aggression.

P: Find ways to sustain a crowded island country which has lost its markets, its overseas possessions and its merchant marine.

Divine Man Friday. General MacArthur's political task would approach the impossible if U.S. statecraft had not spelled out the Emperor's subordination to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Forces. Under the Potsdam terms as interpreted in Secretary Byrnes' message to Japan, the Emperor's influence must be exerted to crush resistance, carry out Allied orders. Where Hirohito fails, U.S. military forces will step in.

Were the victors building up the throne? They were taking that chance. But the defeated Emperor's role as Man Friday for the occupying powers may in the long run disillusion the Japanese as nothing else could.

The house cleaning certain to come early in the occupation will scarcely enhance the Emperor's "divinity." Under the Potsdam declaration, which includes the purging of militarism from Japan, MacArthur has the right to toss out any member of the Emperor's new gov ernment (see FOREIGN NEWS), and many of them will have to go.

Yes & No. Once the formalities of surrender are completed and MacArthur has moved into Japan, he will be Supreme Allied Commander there. This occupation will be totally different from that of Germany; there will be no "military government" as such. But MacArthur presumably will have under him a chief military superviser, a political adviser, regional chiefs, and a swarm of other functionaries. Already lined up were such able men as Brigadier General William E. Crist, who has been military governor of Okinawa, and Colonel Sidney F. Mashbir, who has made a career of knowing the Japanese in peace & war.

The Army has trained more than 2,000 officers (including some Navy men) for the occupation; the Navy has trained 1,100. On top priorities they jammed the transcontinental and transpacific airlines, rushing helter-skelter to a job they had not expected to take on for months.

No one knew how many men it would take to occupy Japan or how long the occupation would last. If Germany was any criterion, the Japanese occupation would be neither as long nor as thorough as many expected it to be (German occupation estimates last week: 250,000 men, two and a half years).

A keen young officer trained for occupation duties was asked at Guam last week whether he thought the enormous, complex job of changing Japan could be done. His answer: yes. He was asked whether he thought the U.S. would in fact succeed in doing it. His answer: no.

The Shock of Defeat. Never was a nation so ill-prepared for defeat. A Domei broadcast admitted that the Emperor's rescript came as a shock to a people who had been cut off from true military and political news of the outside world. Official statements and Tokyo broadcasts foreshadowed some of the Jap attitudes with which MacArthur must deal:

P: The Japs in Japan have little or no idea that their essential national sovereignty has been or will be impaired.

P: They believe that they have made lasting friends in "Greater East Asia," and that they can capitalize on these friend ships in the future.

P: They have utterly no conception of the humiliations and deprivations which the mildest of occupations must impose.

Japanese (and U.S.) emphasis on the atomic bomb as a decisive surrender factor did not help matters. There was danger that the Japanese would attribute defeat to a single scientific advance, fail to realize that they were beaten before Hiroshima dissolved. The occupation authorities, or a future Japanese government, would have to tell the people that Tokyo in July had secretly asked Moscow to mediate for peace.

The people had disregarded or never heard most U.S. propaganda broadcasts to Japan. In fact, the most important of these broadcasts were not aimed primarily at the people. The U.S.'s chief psychological spokesman, Navy Captain Ellis M. Zacharias, had aimed his principal shafts at a few men he knew well in Japan's top strata. Whether they had heeded him and would be useful in defeat was one of the big questions yet to be answered.

Docile Japs? Would the regimented, superstitious, uninformed Japanese docilely obey their Emperor? Washington experts were divided: most of those who knew Japan in the comfortable '20s thought that they would. Some even said that the Japanese were not a warlike people. Those who had met the Japanese in battle differed.

Some feared that the ronin -- unemployed feudal warriors, many of whom turned brigand on the pretext of purifying the nation -- would roam Japan again. Demobilization plus unemployment might bring thousands of modern ronin.

Respect for authority is a conspicuous Japanese trait, but it is by no means universal. Between 1921 and 1936 the Japs assassinated seven Cabinet members. Japanese history is full of civil war, revolt, secret conspiracy, and disrespect for the Emperor. When Perry opened Japan the government's word was not enough to make Japan safe for foreigners. Disorders ended only after western ships bombarded Shimonoseki.

The Japs are capable of developing a strong underground opposition to U.S. rule, sullenly nourishing the hope of vengeance. But if they choose to play it the other way, they can be wholly ingratiating. Their behavior in everyday contact -- the kind that counts with occupying forces -- captivated a high proportion of Americans in prewar Japan.

Well aware that non-fraternization had broken down badly in Germany, the Army nevertheless intended to apply a strict non-fraternization policy in Japan -- at least in the early stages of occupation.

Said an Army pamphlet:

Japanese women "have been taught to hate you. They do as their men tell them, and many of them have been told to kill you. Sex is one of the oldest and most effective weapons in history. The Geisha girl knows how to wield it charmingly. She may entice you only to poison you. She may slit your throat. Stay away from the women of Japan -- all of them."

Hungry Japs. Even in stringent wartime, Japan did not succeed in feeding herself. Without food from the overseas empire, hungry Japanese may be anything but docile. MacArthur may permit them to buy food abroad: in exchange they might sell textiles to China and other Far Eastern countries where clothes are even scarcer than food. But for a long time Japan's exports to those countries will be in reparations, not trade.

Less than a tenth of Japan's prewar overseas merchant tonnage is now usable. The carrying trade which helped Japan balance her imports is gone; Allied economic control plans will hardly permit Japan again to dominate Far Eastern shipping.

What is left of her heavy industry (probably at least 50%) needs raw materials from the lost mainland. If the German control pattern is followed, much of Japan's machinery may go to aid in the reconstruction of China and other victimized countries. Some that cannot be removed will be destroyed because it formed the base of Japan's war potential. The remainder will be needed to rebuild the shattered railroad system and the cities.

Washington also worried about how to dispose of the zaibatsu, Japan's big business clans who, in close alliance with the rural landlords, control the peculiar Japanese economy. High rents forced farm children off the land, drained them into factories where their cheap labor was the basis for Japan's aggressive economic penetration into markets which she later sought to hold by political control.

Even with a Son of Heaven as his helper, MacArthur's job will be tough. But, whatever happens, it will be tougher on the Japanese than on the victors.

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