An Inoffensive Rearmament (25 page)

Legend records that the sun goddess, Amaterasu Ōmikami, ordered her grandson, Ninigi no Mikoto, to the Islands of Japan, the Divine Land, to govern the people living there. The warlike tribes that Ninigi found were themselves descendants of lesser gods. According to
Kojiki,
a manuscript written about AD 700–800, Jimmu Tennō, the great great grandson of Ninigi no Mikoto, and, of course, a direct descendant of the sun goddess, finally subdued the warring tribes and established the Imperial throne of Japan. Starting with Jimmu, so the Imperial manuscripts record, his descendants have ruled the Divine Land without interruption for more than 2,600 years.

In time, legend became a national faith, and finally in the nineteenth century, the Meiji constitution transcribed national faith into legal reality. Article 3 of the prewar constitution declared, “The Emperor is sacred and inviolable.”

In their dedication to the emperor god, the Japanese people took their cue from the army. The Imperial soldier, or
heitai,
became the natural successor of the samurai. At the completion of his tour of military services, he returned home to breathe fire and inspiration into the hearts of his family and friends. The sacred emperor remained his commander for life, for the Japanese soldier had a very personal relationship with his emperor. That relationship was clearly defined in the Imperial Rescript of Emperor Meiji, and its simple precepts became the soldier's bible. It told the soldier and the nation how to live, how to fight, and how to die. Because the Imperial Rescript had such profound influence on the Japanese fighting force and the nation, I read the document very carefully.

Emperor Meiji begins his rescript with the declarations, “The forces of our Empire are in all ages under the command of the Emperor. . . . The supreme command of our forces is in our hands, and although we may entrust subordinate commands to our subjects, yet the ultimate authority we ourselves shall hold and never delegate to any subjects. . . . Soldiers and Sailors, we are your supreme commander-in-chief.”

This left not the slightest question in the mind of the simplest
heitai
as to his relationship with his emperor. The Imperial Rescript as the Holy Writ of the Imperial Forces enunciated five basic virtues. The first was loyalty:

The soldier and sailor should consider loyalty their essential duty. A soldier or sailor in whom this spirit is not strong however skilled in art or proficient in science, is a mere puppet, and a body of soldiers and sailors wanting in loyalty . . . is in an emergency no better than rabble . . . neither be led astray by current opinions or meddle in politics, but . . . fulfill your essential duty of loyalty, and bear in mind that duty is weightier than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather.

This virtue, like the other four, was basically a sound military precept, but in practice the officers and the noncommissioned officers who explained the Imperial Rescript to their soldiers perverted its meaning to serve their own purpose. For the militarists, loyalty demanded unbelievable self-sacrifice in the name of the emperor, the ancestors, and the divine land. It often inspired behavior repugnant to the Western minds. In the Pacific War, loyalty became so disoriented it drove Japanese soldiers, writhing in pain, to stab at the helping hand of an American
medic who tried to offer assistance. Horrible, inhuman “slaughter battles” were fought in unhappy China in the name of loyalty. And it was loyalty that required officers to fall on their swords and soldiers to blow themselves to bits with hand grenades clutched to their breasts. It was a cruel, savage, senseless, destructive loyalty, but a loyalty nonetheless, that made “good soldiers” of simple, ignorant peasants and workers.

The second virtue prescribed by Emperor Meiji ensured complete and direct control over all members of the armed forces. This virtue enunciated the sanctity of rank and importance of obedience. It enjoined the subordinate to obey the superior: “The soldier and the sailors should be strict in observing propriety . . . juniors should submit to their seniors. . . . Inferiors should regard the orders of their superiors as issuing directly from us.”

This last statement enabled Japanese commanders to move squads, companies, and divisions unflinchingly into the face of certain death, for the orders of the superior were in fact as binding on the inferiors as though they were issued by the son of heaven himself. No one could question the orders of a “living god.”

There are classic examples in which commanders ordered their men to march without water in maneuvers under such severe conditions that some died from sheer exhaustion. Examination later of their canteens would reveal that they were full but untouched.
Bushidō
and the Imperial Rescript taught the Japanese to prefer death to disobedience.

Yet in other situations, direct disobedience of orders became a virtue. This contradiction resulted from the policy of assigning staff officers to field commanders directly by the Imperial General Staff in Tōkyō with implicit instructions to the staff officers to obey orders from Tōkyō only. Under this policy, an Imperial staff officer on a division commander's staff in the field could and often deliberately defied the orders of his commander on the theory that those in the Imperial General Staff expressed the desires of the emperor. Commanders in the field were frustrated time and again by this senseless interpretation of the emperor's desires, and there are many historical instances of battles being “snafued” by officers of the Imperial General Staff.

This theory was so strongly ingrained in the Imperial Army that when the NPR became the National Safety Force, and later the Self-Defense Forces (Jieitai), and previously purged officers of the Imperial Japanese Army were integrated into the new military establishment, our American advisers had a most difficult
time in trying to prevent the re-establishment of this discredited policy in the new force. The Japanese G-3, the officer responsible for operations and training of the defense force, who had been a member of the Imperial Japanese Staff, was especially adamant in his views. He insisted that defense force staff officers be assigned directly to positions in the field with control over them from General Group Headquarters in Tōkyō. When Colonel Albergotti, our G-3 adviser, could not convince him to do otherwise, I finally decided to talk to General Hayashi. After about two hours of discussion, General Hayashi finally accepted our point of view with, “You won the war. We'll try it your way.”

I often found that General Hayashi resolved differences in position between his officers and the American advisers with this practical approach. How long they'll try it our way, I'm not sure.

Under the concept of the Imperial Rescript, top military leaders had direct access to the emperor as their supreme commander in chief. This permitted the top generals and admirals to circumvent political leadership and undermine uncooperative ministers and governments. This close association of the emperor and the military ensured that no one would rise in opposition to the army or navy budgets or military policies the militarists supported. They could always lean on a directive “issuing directly from us.” But, after all, power is relative, and the power of those who govern is directly proportional to the indifference of the people. Some believe that in the United States, a catastrophic war can be launched by the president without the aid of an Imperial Rescript. As Congress has permitted its constitutional powers to erode, the president has acquired frightening authority. Today, many believe that the president has greater and more immediate power than the Japanese emperor-god to plunge the nation into a nuclear holocaust.

Returning to the Imperial Rescript, courage was the third virtue. In enunciating this concept, Emperor Meiji was uniquely prophetic: “The soldier and sailor should esteem valor. But there is true valor and false. To incite to mere impetuosity, to violent action cannot be called true valor. If you affect valor and act with violence, the world will in the end detest you and look upon you as wild beasts. Of this you must take heed.” As victors in a savage, fanatical war, we could strike a righteous attitude and accuse, “You should have heeded your emperor.”

It was in the name of valor, nonetheless, that the Japanese men reached their apex of self-sacrifice. The story of the “Three Human Bombs” is a classic of human valor.

During the fighting in China in the early 1930s, a Japanese attack was brought to a halt before strongly fortified Chinese emplacements. Three soldiers were selected from a large number of volunteers to breach the position. To ensure that the breach was properly placed, three men carried a “bangalore torpedo” (a long tube loaded with explosives), carefully placed it in the assigned location, and exploded the device, blowing themselves to bits. Their act immortalized them. They went to their ancestors in the spirit of the samurai who while dying raises himself and with his last breath shouts, “Tennō Heika, Banzai!”

In the last two virtues, the Imperial Rescript enjoined the soldiers and sailors to value faithfulness and righteousness and to live a simple life: “Faithfulness implies keeping one's work and righteousness the fulfillment of one's duty. . . . The soldier and sailor should make simplicity their aim. If you do not make simplicity your aim, you will become effeminate and frivolous and acquire fondness for luxurious and extravagant ways. . . . We hereby reiterate our warning. Never do you soldiers and sailors make light of this injunction.”

In Japan, bursting with people, limited in material resources, lacking food for its masses, and possessing only the bare necessities of life, this last virtue was the easiest for the military and the populace to achieve. It was also a very practical injunction, warning the subjects to be content with their lot.

This then was the Imperial Rescript of Emperor Meiji. Its spiritual force had its roots in
bushidō.
Each day this force was rekindled in the young
heitai
by the officers and noncommissioned officers of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy. It put “spirit in their eyes” and valor in their hearts. It gave the Japanese
heitai
a spiritual reason for being. It inspired them to emulate the samurai and the nation to endure heroic sacrifices.

The delicate problem that the new leaders of Japan faced in building their defense force was to balance and integrate their ancient
bushidō
ethics with the new, still unfamiliar precepts of democracy. It is interesting to note that seven months after the establishment of the NPR, General Hayashi was trying to accomplish this intricate balance. In addressing one of his regiments in the field, he said, “The fundamental spirit of the NPR I firmly hold to be patriotism and love of our race. We love our parents, our brothers with whom we are one blood, and our wives and children. By extending this love, we love the Japanese people; we love the land of Japan. We love our fatherland which we were entrusted by our
forefathers to turn over to our posterity. This is a traditional sincere feeling deep-rooted in the life of the Japanese people.”

He was stressing patriotism, love of race, love of country, and obligation to ancestors and posterity. He had not as yet mentioned the emperor, but this omission was to be short-lived. A few months later, on the auspicious occasion of the emperor's fiftieth birthday on April 29, 1951, in a speech to his forces, General Hayashi found it appropriate to deplore the lack of respect for the Imperial family. On this occasion he said, “This source of our (national) distress, however, is found less in the material damage to our country than in the lack of goodwill towards one another, in the lack of patriotism, and in the lack of respect and affection for our Imperial family—a central symbol of our national unity.”

Finally in a stirring speech to his soldiers, he made a gallant effort to link the new military organization with the Japanese people. In this speech titled “Let us be the peoples' defense force,” he bridges an ancient gap: “Needless to say, if this organization [Japanese defense force] is to play its rightful role in the new Japan, it must be ‘an organization of the people.' This must be the fundamental principle upon which this defense force should be established.”

On that note, I take hope that the American occupation brought a new dimension and that the new democratic military forces of Japan may yet demonstrate that “storms make oaks take deeper root.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN