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Legal Reform in Occupied Japan
A Participant Looks Back
By Alfred C. Oppler PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1976 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-09234-8
CHAPTER 1
Assignment to Japan
After V-J Day, the Foreign Economic Administration, having been a war agency, was dissolved, and we employees were temporarily transferred to the Department of State. Its personnel officer did not appear to have any interest in my German experience and I myself was fed up with German problems. Hence, I was delighted to be approached with the question of whether I would accept an assignment to Japan to serve in General MacArthur's Tokyo Headquarters, which ran the occupation of the defeated country. The prospect of getting away from the German past, of experiencing a different people and civilization, and of being able, perhaps, to help free Japanese society from some of the evils that had brought about militarist and authoritarian rule, appeared to me as a challenging opportunity. After discussing the offer with my wife, who was realistic rather than enthusiastic about it, I declared my willingness to accept the job.
Now the processing in the War Department started, and for at least two weeks I had to engage in the physical exercise of stamping the corridors of the labyrinth called Pentagon. After personal and medical checks had been completed, I was received by the colonel in charge of recruiting persons for the Japanese theater. He told me that I was to join the political unit, called Government Section, of the Tokyo General Headquarters (GHQ). He described to me the conditions under which I was to live, and painted a much rosier picture than the actual situation warranted. Among other things, he said I would be billeted in the first-class Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. He regretted that the "dependents" could not join the group assigned to Japan for the time being, but he expected housing for families to be finished in three months. I was to start in a P-5 position, corresponding to a major's rank.
As it turned out, only generals, full colonels in leading positions, and civilian VIPs enjoyed the accommodations of the Imperial Hotel, and my initial experiences with housing in Tokyo were not very encouraging. It also did not take three months, but a year and a quarter until my family was allowed to join me. Some of my colleagues who were processed by the same officer were exposed to similar optimism, and jokingly, we later used to call him "the world's greatest liar." Still, his motives may have been quite charitable. If I had known that the separation from my wife and child would last that long, I might possibly have withdrawn my acceptance of the offer, and I would have missed the best opportunity of my professional life.
I remember my interview with this man for another reason. When he did not give me any information on what I was supposed to do in Japan, I volunteered the confession that, although I had some familiarity with European affairs, I did not have any knowledge of things Japanese. As a matter of fact, this ignorance had bothered me since I had been recruited. "Oh, that is quite all right," the colonel answered. "If you knew too much about Japan, you might be prejudiced. We do not like old Japan hands!" I was somewhat baffled to observe the same phenomenon here as I had in the Department of State: here they wanted me because I did not know anything, and in State they were disinterested in my German background because I knew too much. Subsequently, when in Japan, I understood what the colonel had in mind. From the point of view of the military occupant, the democratizing program required reformers eager to build up something new. The old Japan hand, familiar with and often fond of the nation's past and tradition, was inherently more conservative and, to some extent, skeptical toward the reforming zeal of the occupation officials. It was for that reason that I subsequently found the old Japan hand an extremely useful counterpoise to the democratizing pioneer in myself as well as in others.
I still did not know what kind of work I would have to do in Japan, and did not have the slightest notion that my German legal background might qualify me for understanding the Japanese law, which was based on the Continental, and especially German, legal system. As I found out later, my transfer to Japan resulted from the Tokyo Headquarters' request to the Pentagon for a person of Continental, if possible German, juridical experience.
My departure was scheduled for the end of January 1946. Its worst aspect was the separation from my family. Again, there were to be thousands of miles between us, this time the Pacific Ocean — although I knew my wife and child were safe, in good hands, and could reasonably hope to be reunited with them soon, a situation quite different from the time when the Atlantic separated us. Nevertheless, there is always something foreboding in these goodbye scenes at railway stations, piers, or airports, a sudden moment of anxious thought lest one may never see his dear ones again. I was able to spend Christmas in Cambridge and say farewell to Mrs. Kershaw, whose age and condition justified some anxiety, and to my daughter, Ellen, now a senior in high school. Then my wife accompanied me back to Washington, and we enjoyed a few days together before she had to return on New Year's Eve to teach school on January 2nd. I accompanied her to Union Station, and when the waving goodbye had ended, I stood there, feeling utterly lonely and a little confused, but fully aware that a new chapter in my life had begun.
On one of the last days of January, I left the capital on a military airplane. At this time, after the war, there was a shortage of aircraft, and many of those available were defective. Although I had priority 2, I was stranded in Honolulu for two weeks after landing on Hickam Field. I was lucky enough to suffer this forced delay in one of the loveliest places in the world. It was something like an interlude between two worlds.
Finally, the flight went on. Shortly before Wake Island, in the middle of the night, the pilot told us that one engine no longer functioned and that we must stop there for repairs. We stayed for hours in a primitive waiting room, where coffee was served, and were relieved when we could board the plane again. The takeoff seemed to be quite regular, but when, after twenty minutes, I looked down, I still saw the lights of Wake Island. We must have circled above it all the time. We were not too happy when the pilot reappeared and said: "We have the same engine trouble again and must return!"
When we got out, it was two A.M. and pitch dark. I fell over an iron bar and injured my foot so that I could not walk. Wake Island had no housing, and I was carried into a tent, where I lay alone, while my foot swelled painfully. It was anything but pleasant, inasmuch as the tropical sun hit me at six or seven o'clock in the morning and the heat became unbearable in the tent. What a letdown after I had begun this trip in such an adventurous spirit! These morning hours seemed endless, but finally a jeep arrived and carried me through the desert. Suddenly a real, small, and newly built house emerged — the dispensary, where I was dumped. A smiling medical captain stood in front of it and welcomed me with real affection. "Congratulations," he exclaimed, "I greet you as the first patient in our new dispensary!" I answered that I appreciated the honor, but that my main concern was to get away from the island as soon as possible and to continue my flight to Tokyo. After he examined my foot he said that he could enable me to walk, at least temporarily, if he gave me five injections with novocaine, after which I would have to use my foot for at least two hours. I accepted this attractive offer and after the injections were made with the cheerful aggressiveness of a dentist, I began to pace the floor of the room up and down, up and down, for two hours in the grisly heat, to which I had not become accustomed even during a Washington summer. It was a rude therapy, but it helped me to walk a little, and in the late afternoon I was carried up the steps of an airplane, direction Tokyo. When we took off, I did not foresee that several years later I would have to land again on Wake Island because of engine troubles. The flight to Tokyo went off smoothly, and at dawn the contours of the four Japanese islands became visible. Although my foot was damaged, I felt a sanguine expectation of the new world that awaited me in this third continent into which Providence and the Pentagon had sent me.
CHAPTER 2
Arrival in Tokyo
I had been among a group of men, some of whom were to join other sections of the headquarters. Future colleagues of mine in the Government Section were Andrew J. Grajdanzev and John W. Masland. Both were assigned to the Local Government Branch. Grajdanzev turned out to be a fanatic of decentralization and home rule. As a human being, he was a pleasant combination of kindness and intellectual sophistication. Masland, who was in Tokyo for only a short time, had nothing of Grajdanzev's lively temperament. He was a very balanced and knowledgeable scholar, somewhat withdrawn. He returned to his professorship at Dartmouth College, where he advanced to the position of provost. Since he was one of the most learned members of the Section, it is to be regretted that because of his brief participation in it, and because of his unassuming personality, no more use had been made of him. I visited him in 1961 in Hanover, New Hampshire, and was saddened to learn a few years later that he had died suddenly while traveling in India.
John M. Maki joined headquarters at about the same time as we did. Initially, he worked in the same branch as I did. Of Japanese descent, he had been adopted in childhood by an American couple, and could not have been more American in his attitude and mannerisms. He, too, resumed his academic career after a relatively short time, taught at the University of Washington in Seattle, and became vice dean of the College of Letters, University of Massachusetts. His literary contributions to the political and legal history of contemporary Japan are invaluable, although I have sometimes felt that he is perhaps a little too much of a panegyrist of the Occupation. While beginning to tell the story of my work in Japan, I am deeply conscious of the temptation to yield to this danger out of loyalty to the group of which I am proud to have been a member.
Our navy plane landed on the main naval base of Yokosuka, whence we were taken in an army plane to Yokohama. There we were loaded into an open truck for transportation to Tokyo. On our way we experienced for the first time the horrible sights of aerial war destruction. Hardly anything but ruins had been left of the once flourishing harbor city of Yokohama. There was a deathlike silence, and the air was filled with a fine light rubble dust, which stained our clothes.
We were glad when we reached Tokyo, where the destruction was bad enough, too, but where at least some parts of the city had been spared in anticipation of the Allied occupation. This was evidently true of the area along the Imperial moat, where the impressive Dai Ichi Sogo building was located. Previously occupied by a giant insurance company, it now served as the seat of the General Headquarters (GHQ) under the American general with the title of Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, abbreviated SCAP. This establishment, also named SCAP, was a microcosm in itself, born quite suddenly in the middle of an alien world. It had all the ingredients of a huge bureaucracy, with ambitious chiefs who were sometimes rivals for the favor of the top man. While in theory representing the Allied victors, the headquarters was in actuality almost completely American. It consisted of two main parts: first, the typical American general staff organization with its four G's (the Personnel, Intelligence, Operations, and Supply and Logistics Sections), an adjutant general, a judge advocate, and so forth; and second, a number of special "Sections," each of them responsible for a distinctive element of Occupation policy. In the approximate order of their importance, they were as follows: Government Section (GS), the political unit; Civil Information and Education (CI&E); Economic and Scientific (ESS); Legal (LS); Public Health and Welfare (PH&WS); Natural Resources (NRS); Diplomatic (DS); Civil Transportation (CTS); Civil Communication (CCS); Civil Property Custodian (CPC); Civilian Personnel (CPS); and Statistics and Report (SRS). There were also a number of service units, such as the Special Service Section and the Troup Information Section. The Sections were subdivided into divisions, and the divisions were usually further broken down into branches.
On February 23, 1946, I entered the 6th floor of the Dai Ichi building, where the Government Section was installed. I was welcomed with great warmth and cheer by Colonel Charles L. Kades, who was the most forceful official of the Section. In the daily routine of work we had to deal principally with him as superior.
The organization of the Section underwent repeated changes. It was headed by brigadier, subsequently major general, Courtney Whitney. At my arrival it consisted of two divisions, a Korean and a Japanese; Kades was the chief of the latter. The Korean Division was later detached, which left only Japanese affairs in the jurisdiction of the Government Section. The units previously called branches under Kades' Public Administration Division then became divisions, and Kades was made deputy chief of the Section. Besides being a dynamic reformer, he had a delightful sense of humor. He may not have expected much of the badly limping fellow who reported to duty. As he told me later, an officer who witnessed my ordeal on the trip to Tokyo had characterized me as a nice guy, but expressed doubts about my usefulness by saying that I was accident prone.
It so happened that my start in Government Section coincided with the most dramatic period of that institution, when its members had just completed, in strict seclusion and secrecy, the draft of a revised Japanese constitution after it had become "evident that the Japanese Government needed guidance and assistance to produce a document that would embody the essentials of democratic government." I did not take part in this adventurous and amazing performance, which actually amounted to the writing of a new basic charter within an unbelievably short time by a group of pragmatic activists, none of whom was a well-known constitutional scholar. The condition of my foot had worsened to a degree that I had to be dispatched to a hospital, where I spent my first ten days in Tokyo. I was still in bed when a messenger from headquarters brought me a draft of the document with a request for my comments. I made a few suggestions and offered some criticism, but that was my only contribution to the remarkable instrument of guidance that was adopted by the Japanese government, initiated as constitutional amendment by the Emperor, with few changes enacted by the Diet (the Japanese Parliament), and promulgated on November 3, 1946. It has survived until the present day. Not one change has been made, in spite of the criticism that it was imposed by the foreign victor and that its Jeffersonian language and its individualistic as well as egalitarian principles were alien to the tradition of Japan and the mainstream of popular Japanese attitudes.
When, after my discharge from the hospital, I joined the headquarters, the climax of the drama of constitution-making was over and, together with other newcomers, I was introduced to the chief of the Section, General Whitney. A vigorously built person, whose facial expression appeared to be a mixture of bonhomie, toughness, and shrewdness, he emanated strength and self-confidence. His welcoming words were characteristic of the man who, like a medieval knight or samurai, had devoted his life to serving his Lord, MacArthur. He used the same lofty, if not bombastic, language of which the latter was a master. His remarks also reflected the constant awareness that MacArthur was a man of destiny whom history had marked for great achievements. Whitney said: "I welcome you to Government Section and I congratulate you on the unique opportunity destiny has given you. While others can observe historical events, you will take part in the making of history!" I was not yet accustomed to this grandiloquence, but retrospectively I must admit that he was absolutely right and, to continue in the same style, I am grateful to Providence for my part in it.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Legal Reform in Occupied Japan by Alfred C. Oppler. Copyright © 1976 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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