An Inoffensive Rearmament (22 page)

While General Shepard and all of us in the Advisory Group were eager to organize an effective Japanese headquarters and staff for the NPR as rapidly as possible, we nevertheless were more acutely concerned with building a military force in being. With our Army engaged in a death struggle on the Korean Peninsula, the payoff in Japan had to be a viable force that could march and fight. An effective combat battalion of Japanese infantrymen in the field was much more important to the United States and Japan at the moment than a Japanese General Staff in Tōkyō. If the NPR had to fight, our American Advisory Group could in such an eventuality provide command and battle direction. Accordingly, while the new Japanese leaders in NPR Headquarters and the General Group fumbled with strange tables of organization and equipment and tried to grasp the meaning of unfamiliar military terms and training requirements, Colonel Albergotti, our operations officer, whipped out a thirteen-week training program, and the Japanese GIs were marching and shooting as soon as we could cut our Marine shoes down to fit them and get carbines in their hands. The major credit for converting Japanese civilians into paramilitary troopers must be given to the American majors and lieutenant colonels and their sergeant assistants who organized and commanded the Japanese forces in the field. Initiative, ingenuity, and action characterized these wonderful American heroes.

The raw material with which the Americans had to work, that is, the volunteers who joined the NPR in those early days, were well above the average for inductees. To begin with, almost 400,000 young people volunteered for the force,
of whom 75,000 were accepted for induction. Over half of those inducted had served in the Imperial Army and Navy. Many of the inductees had been noncommissioned officers, a large percentage combat veterans. Their average age was about twenty-six years. As soon as we dressed them in uniforms, they strongly reminded me of the prewar Japanese army, except we knew their standard of education was much higher. They were generally physically fit, keen of spirit, and eager to make a success in the new organization.

Our immediate problem at the unit level was to select leaders so that we could move and control the unorganized mass. Unable to communicate except through interpreters, our American camp commanders faced a Herculean task. I don't know how they and their Japanese colleagues accomplished the miracle of initial organization. Somehow leaders were found to command squads, platoons, and companies. Four companies were combined into battalions, and overall the American commander ran his troops like a private army. That the companies and the battalions developed in accordance with a common training program and on a prescribed schedule is owing in a great measure to the high level of development and dedication to duty of our officer and noncommissioned officer corps.

While our majors and lieutenant colonels struggled valiantly with their troops at the camps, the Advisory Group in Tōkyō undertook the equally difficult task of selecting and training leaders and instructors for the entire force. Having been stationed as military government chief in the Hiroshima area, I remembered the outstanding school and weapons training facilities our Eighth Army operated on the island of Eta Jima. With General Shepard's approval, I made a hurried visit to my classmate, Colonel Sauer, who commanded the installation. My visit was most timely, as the Eighth Army, under heavy demand for men in Korea, was preparing to close out their operations on the island. It was indeed a master stroke of good luck, and equally important, there was an understanding at Eighth Army Headquarters that the American training facilities and the instructors would be made available for a limited time—enough time to train urgently needed weapons instructors and a few small-unit leaders. Without Eta Jima, it is doubtful that the NPR could have been anything more than an assembly of inadequate police recruits.

A total of 320 potential leaders and instructors, selected from camps all over Japan, attended our first intensive four-week course at the American school. We concentrated on infantry weapons instruction and small-unit leadership. Some
technical men were given instruction in demolitions, combat engineering, and communications. Our first class was a vital training cadre that was to have an invigorating impact on the entire force. Distributed like treasured seeds throughout Japan, they became the key instructors and leaders in the NPR camps.

Forty of the first class of Eta Jima, carefully selected by our advisers there and by representatives of the National Rural Police, were ordered into our headquarters in Tōkyō, where they attended a four-week command and staff course conducted by Colonel Albergotti and his officers. Thirty-nine of them completed the course and were commissioned captains. They became our first leaders in the field, thirty-one being immediately assigned to command battalions while the remaining eight were allocated staff duty.

At the same time, Lieutenant Colonel Freyereisen, our comptroller; Colonel Thoulton, our personnel adviser; and Lieutenant Colonel Weetman, our logistics adviser, organized and conducted schools for finance, personnel, and procurement officers. Two months after the first volunteers donned NPR uniforms, several hundred eager young Japanese were enthusiastically assisting American advisers to build a new, enlightened democratic army in Japan. Of course, it was impossible in a few short weeks to develop military commanders and technicians, but we did instill in these high-quality, intelligent Japanese a keen awareness and appreciation of American instructional methods and theory of leadership and a working acquaintance with our infantry weapons and some of our engineering equipment.

Nevertheless, it was obvious to all, American and Japanese alike, that the higher-level leadership needed to command and staff the force could not be found among those who were volunteering as privates for the NPR. Since the decision had been made not to use former officers of the Imperial forces, this leadership had to be recruited from government agencies, from police establishments, and from business executives, professionals, and technicians.

One of the first requests that the director general made upon taking office was to ask for authority to commission by direct appointment initially two hundred, then an additional eight hundred, in the age group of thirty-one to forty, to be offered direct positions in the lower and intermediate ranks. As the GHQ staff, particularly Generals Willoughby and Whitney, was responsible for the clearing of all NPR leaders, the requests bounced around in the Japanese cabinet and American headquarters for more than a month. At one point, when Ministry of Justice General Ōhashi suggested that there were a large number of former Japanese officers who had served in the army of Manchukuo available for these
posts (officers in the Manchukuo army had not been purged), the G-2 section of SCAP reopened the whole question of purgees. The matter degenerated into an acrimonious debate between General Willoughby and Mr. Ōhashi regarding the numbers actually available. Eventually, after intervention by the Japanese at the highest political level, the NPR was authorized to induct one thousand civilian executives, professionals, and technicians by offering direct appointments to the force.

The actions necessary to query, interview, and induce one thousand successful individuals who were established in their own businesses, professions, and services to give up their careers and join the NPR consumed many months. In the meantime, the organization, training, and development of a force of 75,000 proceeded under American advisers through the young Japanese officers and noncommissioned officers who were evolving from the ranks in the NPR. As time elapsed, with no severe protests being raised in the United States, among our allies, or even from the communist camp, we cautiously supplied the NPR initially with American carbines, then M-1 rifles and .30-caliber machine guns. As the international and local calm continued, we grew bold, issuing .50-caliber machine guns, 60-mm mortars, and eventually 81-mm mortars, ordnance repair shops, combat engineer equipment, and signal communications. While the creeping rearmament proceeded, the prime minister denied that Japan was doing so, steadfastly maintaining that the NPR was a police force, and we pressed our abundant weapons into the hands of the troopers as rapidly as they learned to use them.

By September 1951, one year after our hectic effort to deploy ten thousand NPR recruits on Hokkaidō to block a rumored communist invasion from Sakhalin, the new organization was beginning to assume some of the qualities of a military force. Based in thirty-seven camps throughout Japan, it was loosely grouped into four infantry-type divisions.

Although the force by this time had undergone nothing more advanced than battalion field exercises, the officers and troops had been given extensive individual and small-unit training. Practically everyone in the battalions had actually fired carbines, M-1 rifles, machine guns, bazookas, and mortars. As individual soldiers and members of small units, the NPR men could have given a credible account of themselves. As battalions of infantry, the NPR could, in the closing months of 1951, have put on a whale of a fight. Beyond that, the capability of the force for war was very limited, although in the opinion of many the organization possessed a great potential for future development.

In November 1951, I was privileged to read a formal report and evaluation of the NPR made by Lieutenant Colonel J. G. Figgess, assistant military adviser of the British Embassy in Tōkyō. In a six-page report, summarizing an extensive visit to the NPR in the fields, he noted, “But perhaps the most outstanding feature of the NPR units is the tremendous enthusiasm of all ranks and their evident keenness to make the most of their training. The junior officers (Lieutenants and Captains) and some of the NCOs were particularly impressive. They had joined the NPR as private soldiers and had risen to their present rank through merit and qualities of leadership.” Colonel Figgess concluded his report,

Judging from the standards of the units visited, the National Police Reserve has made great strides since its formation fourteen months ago and the progress has been particularly rapid during the past six months. Although the value of the force for war is not yet very high, the basic organization and training is sound and in view of the enthusiasm of all the ranks for the task in hand I consider that in another six months the infantry elements of the NPR will have reached a standard which would be acceptable in the modern British or American Army. It will be much later than this of course before the NPR is ready to be committed as a composite, self-supporting force since the technical and specialist training of the artillery, engineer and service elements has hardly begun and no field guns and other specialist equipment has yet been issued or even authorized for issue.

At this stage in the development of the NPR, noisy criticism erupted in the press, especially from former Imperial officers, attacking the quality of the leadership of the force. Most of the former military officers were pressing for immediate liquidation of the NPR as a totally inadequate organization. These individuals deplored the imposition of American concepts upon Japanese troops, urging a fresh start in which obviously they would play creative and controlling roles. Aside from those arguing their special interests, there were many Americans and Japanese who sincerely questioned the wisdom of organizing a military force with former police officers and civilian executives when there were so many highly qualified former Imperial officers available for the task. This argument, of course, could not be lightly dismissed, yet there were sound reasons against wholesale embracing of purgees in the NPR.

In visits to units at the camps, we were tremendously impressed with the effectiveness of the leadership at the company and battalion level. Our advisers with the units had uniformly high regard for their Japanese counterparts and especially the young captains and lieutenants serving in the companies. Moreover, I had learned long ago as a regular army professional to stop sneering at the civilian officers. In World War II, I rapidly discovered that a person who was a successful leader in civilian life usually possessed the intelligence and adaptability to develop into a good military commander or staff officer. Accordingly, many of us in the Advisory Group were convinced that the Japanese civilian leaders, who in most instances had to be urged to join the NPR, possessed fine leadership potential. All they needed to be effective soldiers was experience in commanding troops and carefully planned military schooling.

Most significant, from the American view, the civilian leaders brought to the NPR a freshness, enthusiasm, and flexibility that was indispensable in our effort to fashion a new democratic army in Japan. Recognizing their military limitations, they were eager for knowledge. They had nothing to unlearn and so they jumped to the task of learning with gusto. Highly intelligent and adaptable, they rapidly acquired considerable basic military knowledge and skills from their American advisers. It was amazing how much and how quickly they learned the elements of organization, administration, and logistics. They studied our technical and tactical manuals with a devotion. They loved soldiering, demonstrating a keen interest in weapons and commanding troops.

It was my firm conviction at the time that with intelligent assistance from our American advisers, the Japanese leadership in the NPR, from General Hayashi to the lowest-ranking lieutenant, could build an effective military force. We could probably develop an army more rapidly with former Imperial forces, but in the fall of 1951, I failed to see any violent emergency facing Japan that would necessitate any urgent buildup or expansion of its military forces.

Many argued, with merit, that there was no one in the NPR qualified to command a division or even a regiment in combat. But to be realistic, almost seven years had elapsed since any Japanese officer had commanded a division or regiment in combat. It was doubtful that former Imperial generals, now advancing in age, would be effective in commanding an American-type division organized with strange weapons, vehicles, and equipment. Even the younger Imperial colonels would have to undergo months of reorientation and re-education on new concepts
dictated by modern military weapons and equipment. Moreover, it was a fact of life that even with the best military leaders in the world, it would be a year or a year and a half before the NPR would be ready to fight in division strength. Aside from the lack of qualified officers, the force had no artillery, tanks, or other heavy weapons necessary for a combat division. Nor did it possess the signal equipment, transportation, or logistical capability to be employed in divisional units. Even after the heavy weapons and other necessary equipment were issued and the troops trained in their use, months would be required to shake down units and exercise them in division maneuvers. One does not build an army for a nation overnight.