MacArthur in Japan

In the last days of August 1945 foreign occupation troops set foot in the Japanese islands for the first time in their history. On 30 August General Douglas MacArthur, whom President Harry Truman had appointed Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), landed at Atsugi airfield near Tokyo. The next day, 31 August, at a hotel in Yokohama, where he had set up his first headquarters, he welcomed two generals who had surrendered to the Japanese in 1942 and survived more than three years in captivity.

Some summaries state under 31 August that MacArthur “took command of the Japanese government in Tokyo”. This is a simplification. MacArthur was not yet in Tokyo at the time: he was living and working in Yokohama, and entered the capital only on 8 September. His authority as SCAP formally took effect after the instrument of surrender was signed on 2 September. Nor did he take over the government in a literal sense, since the Americans had decided to rule Japan indirectly, through the existing government and the imperial administration.

The road to Atsugi

After Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and Hirohito announced this in his radio broadcast of 15 August, Truman appointed MacArthur supreme commander, charged with accepting the surrender and directing the occupation. The Allies agreed to the appointment. From then on MacArthur, until then commander of US Army forces in the Pacific, acted on behalf of all the states at war with Japan.

The details of the handover of the country were settled in Manila, where on 19 August a Japanese delegation under General Torashirō Kawabe, sent after the ceasefire order, had flown in. There the Japanese received instructions for receiving the first American units, together with the text of General Order No. 1, which specified to whom Japanese forces in the various parts of Asia were to surrender. The Atsugi naval air base in Kanagawa Prefecture was chosen as the landing ground for the first aircraft. It was a risky choice, since only a few days earlier the airmen of Captain Yasuna Kozono stationed there had refused to lay down their arms, mutinying in the days that followed the Kyūjō incident.

A typhoon delayed the operation by two days. On 27 August ships of Admiral William Halsey’s Third Fleet entered Sagami Bay, and on 29 August the battleship USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay. On 28 August a group of some 150 soldiers and communications specialists under Colonel Charles Tench landed at Atsugi. It was received by a Japanese committee headed by General Seizō Arisue, chief of army intelligence. The Americans prepared the airfield and communications to receive the main force.

30 August: landing unarmed

On the morning of 30 August transport aircraft carrying troops of General Joseph Swing’s 11th Airborne Division began arriving from Okinawa. The aircraft landed every few minutes, and the soldiers fanned out across the area, securing the airfield and the roads. That same morning the 4th Marine Regiment landed at Yokosuka and took over the great Japanese naval base. Hundreds of thousands of armed Japanese soldiers were still stationed around Tokyo, and the first Americans had only light weapons.

Shortly after 2 p.m. a four-engined Douglas C-54 named Bataan landed at Atsugi. MacArthur came down the steps in an open-necked uniform shirt, wearing sunglasses and with a corncob pipe in his mouth. Waiting for him at the bottom was General Robert Eichelberger, commander of the Eighth Army, which was to occupy eastern Japan. MacArthur is said to have remarked that it had been a long road from Melbourne to Tokyo, but that this looked like the end of it.

According to his memoirs and the account of his close aide, General Courtney Whitney, MacArthur ordered his staff officers not to carry weapons, to show the Japanese that he did not fear an assassination attempt. Whitney also cited Winston Churchill, who is said to have called the landing the bravest deed of the whole war. These accounts come from the circle of MacArthur, who took great care of his image. The landing had been carefully prepared, and the photographs of the general with his pipe on the aircraft steps went round the world and became one of the symbols of the end of the war.

From Atsugi the motorcade drove some 30 kilometres to Yokohama. The Japanese supplied old, dilapidated cars, because they had no others. According to American accounts, Japanese soldiers lined the entire route with their backs to the passing vehicles. The Americans took this as a mark of respect, since soldiers stood in the same way when the Emperor passed. Some historians, however, believe it was simply a matter of securing the route. MacArthur took up residence in the Hotel New Grand overlooking Yokohama harbour, one of the few buildings in the city to have survived the air raids.

31 August: a meeting at the Hotel New Grand

On 31 August MacArthur began setting up a temporary headquarters in Yokohama. Further units of the Eighth Army were arriving in the city and its surroundings, and since 29 August American navy teams had been freeing Allied prisoners from camps around Tokyo Bay, among them the Ōmori camp.

In the evening two special guests arrived at the hotel. General Jonathan Wainwright had taken command in the Philippines after MacArthur, on the President’s orders, left Corregidor in March 1942. In May 1942 he had been forced to surrender on Corregidor and give up all the forces in the Philippines. The British General Arthur Percival had surrendered Singapore in February 1942. Both had been sent to camps for senior officers in Taiwan and then in Manchuria. There, in the second half of August 1945, they were found by a team from the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS). They were flown via Mukden and China to Manila, and from there to Japan.

According to MacArthur’s account and the photographers who recorded the scene, the general was just sitting down to dinner when he was told of the guests’ arrival. He left the dining room and embraced Wainwright, who was emaciated, grey-haired and leaning on a cane. Wainwright feared that at home he would be blamed for the surrender. MacArthur assured him that he could have any post he wanted. Both generals, Wainwright and Percival, were invited to the surrender ceremony.

Indirect rule

At the turn of August and September the Americans did not take over the administration of Japan, even though this may have been how the public perceived it. Unlike Germany, where no government existed after the surrender and power was assumed by Allied military authorities, Japan had a functioning government under Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni, formed on 17 August. Its task was to see the country through the surrender and the demobilisation of the army. For dealing with the occupiers, the Japanese set up a special liaison office attached to the Foreign Ministry. It was through this office that the instructions of MacArthur’s staff reached the government.

The principle of indirect rule was set down in the document “United States Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan”, which Truman approved on 6 September. The supreme commander was to exercise his authority through Japanese institutions, including the Emperor, insofar as this served the purposes of the occupation. Japanese accounts also describe an episode on 3 September: the Foreign Minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, persuaded MacArthur in Yokohama to withdraw prepared proclamations introducing direct military government and American occupation currency. The indirect form of occupation allowed the Americans to govern a country of 70 million with relatively few personnel, but it also preserved a large part of the old bureaucracy.

What followed

On 2 September 1945, aboard the Missouri, Mamoru Shigemitsu on behalf of the government and the Emperor and General Yoshijirō Umezu on behalf of the General Staff signed the instrument of Japan’s surrender. MacArthur signed it as supreme commander, and Admiral Chester Nimitz on behalf of the United States. Wainwright and Percival stood behind MacArthur. MacArthur handed the first pen he had used to sign the document to Wainwright.

On 8 September MacArthur entered Tokyo, and the flag of the United States was raised over the American embassy. In mid-September his headquarters moved into the Dai-ichi Life Insurance building opposite the Imperial Palace. It was from there that the occupation of Japan was directed over the following years. On 27 September Hirohito called on MacArthur for the first time at the ambassador’s residence. The photograph of the tall general in an open-necked shirt beside the shorter Emperor in a morning coat showed the Japanese who now ruled the country.

The occupation brought the dissolution of the army, the trial of the major war criminals in Tokyo, land reform, votes for women and a new constitution in 1947, in which Japan renounced war. The Emperor remained on the throne but lost his political power. MacArthur governed Japan until April 1951, when Truman dismissed him during the Korean War. The occupation ended in April 1952, when the peace treaty signed in San Francisco came into force.