Army, Navy & Air Power

One morning last week, cutaway-clad Tokutaro Kimura, Tokyo's opposite number to U.S. Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, strode onto the flat, tiled roof of Japan's yellow brick Pentagon, past Japanese army, navy and air force officers snapped to attention, and said: "Peace cannot be attained with folded arms . . . It is the duty of our country to complete the arrangements through which it could defend itself with its own hands." With that, Japan officially began rearming.

Nine years ago, Japan surrendered nearly 8,500,000 soldiers, 102 warships, 3,000 warplanes, and a year later in its new, U.S.-dictated constitution vowed: "Land, sea and air forces . . . will never be maintained." Four years later it fell to General Douglas MacArthur, who had persuaded and forced Japan to forswear arms, to urge Japan to reverse itself. Thirteen days after the North Koreans attacked in 1950, he asked the Japanese to increase their constabulary to 75,000.

So sharp was the Japanese distaste for rearmament, and so intense the politicians' fear of a new group of militarists, that the constabulary had to be called the "National Police Reserve." In the new military semantics, divisions were "regions," officers were "superintendents," tanks were "special vehicles." After Japan signed a peace treaty with the U.S. (September 1951), the police became the "National Safety Force" and expanded to a 110,000 army, a 10,000-man navy. Last week Japan took the final step, and its force was changed from "Safety" to "Self-Defense." To help with the changeover, the U.S. House of Representatives last week voted to hand over to Japan some $500 million worth of U.S. weapons already in the islands. Next month Japanese troops will replace the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division in Hokkaido, the major Japanese island nearest Russia.

By 1959 Japan will have:

P:An army of 260,000 men. Some 5,500 miles of new roads, capable of bearing 20-and 30-ton tanks, will be built.

P:A navy of 15,700 men. It already has 18 U.S.-supplied frigates and 55 large landing ships, will get two destroyers and two destroyer-escorts from the U.S.

P:An air force (first independent air arm in Japan's history) of 40,000 men, 1,300 planes, including 525 F-86 Sabre jets (21 squadrons) and 96 B66 Douglas twin-jet light bombers (six squadrons).

In deference to lingering fears of reviving militarism, Japan's top defense leadership is civilian. Frail, old (68 years) Tokutaro Kimura, the overall defense boss, is a lawyer. On all major decisions, he must consult an eight-man Defense Council of civilians.

A look at the second line of command shows how dizzily history's pendulum has swung back. The new air operations chief helped plan the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a former official of the Home Ministry which ran Japan's Gestapo-like KempeiTai (Thought Police). The secretary of the JCS was once secretary to Premier Hideki Tojo, hanged 5 1/2 years ago for war crimes. Half of the new army officers and three-fourths of the naval officers fought against the U.S. in World War II.

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