POLICIES & PRINCIPLES: Watch on Tokyo

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Orders from Washington and careful staff work in Tokyo had begun to show results. Those who had doubted U.S. intentions toward Japan (see below) no longer had any excuse for doubting: the U.S. Government intended—as it always had intended—to subject Japan to severe retribution and a thorough occupation.

One piece of evidence was General Douglas Mac Arthur's plain-spoken statements to the U.S. press. Before he cleared the air, he had set the State and War Departments by the ears with an offhand announcement that he would soon need only 200,000 troops in Japan (he had previously estimated 500,000, then 400,000). State's overly sensitive Acting Secretary Dean Acheson tartly announced that policy was being made in Washington, not in Tokyo. Much of the U.S. press and many a citizen jumped to the unwarranted conclusion that MacArthur was for a quick & easy occupation.

MacArthur's own account dispelled this impression and gave Acheson his comeuppance. Among other things, MacArthur carefully limited his endorsement of the Emperor to the period of "surrender and demobilization"—the first official indication that Hirohito's days in the Imperial Palace might be numbered (see FOREIGN NEWS).

The Policy. But the clincher came from the White House with publication of President Truman's directive to Mac-Arthur, sent to him before he set foot in Japan. Its salient features:

¶ A change in the form of government, away from oligarchy and toward democracy, was the No. 1 U.S. objective. If the Japanese themselves chose to bring this change about, at whatever risk to Japan's wartime rulers, the occupation forces were not to interfere.

¶ Militaristic and nationalistic influences should be removed.

¶ War criminals should be arrested, tried and punished.

¶ Religious freedom, individual liberties and civil rights should be established, political and racial persecution ended. Organization of labor, industry and agriculture on a democratic basis should be encouraged.

¶ Heavy industry, manufacturing, merchant marine and science should be allowed to recover only within the bounds of a restricted Japan's peacetime needs. The imperial household, owner of much of Japan's industrial wealth, should not be exempt.

¶ Reparations should be exacted through the transfer of goods or capital equipment.

Joy, with Reservations. The U.S. public had greeted with joy MacArthur's promise of a reduced occupation army. Many Americans were all for aggressive watchfulness in the postwar world; not so many were willing to man the watch.

Veterans of the war with Japan, returning from service or imprisonment, warned the U.S. against mistaking Japanese guile for submission, urged a long and strict occupation.

Asked how long the U.S. should keep its air forces in Japan, grizzled Lieut. General Barney Giles, Deputy Commander of U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific, declared:

"Oh, about a hundred years. Yes, I'm serious about that."