MACARTHUR: MEN AND MISSION
Baldwin, Roger
MacArthur: Man and Mission By ROGER BALDWIN EDITOR'S NOTE: Mr. Baldwin's review was originally written and set in type several weeks before the President's dismissal of Gen. MacArthur. Following...
...But I observed in Gen...
...personnel do not understand either democracy or the Japanese, and that the costs of Occupation to the Japanese are too great a burden...
...Doubtless he struts in company, though in personal interviews he is relaxed, charming, witty, and an attentive listener...
...But what gives most liberals doubt is the almost idolatrous support of the general by the most reactionary elements in American life—Hearst, McCormick, and the Republican Tories...
...Gunther concludes that MacArthur is a "great man with a great job done...
...Yet it will not diminish the luster of his achievements nor the estimate of his stature...
...For honest and colorful reporting Gunther does the most illuminating job of all among the many books on MacArthur and the Occupation...
...But he welcomes constructive criticism from his colleagues and the Japanese...
...MacArthur on THE RIDDLE OF GENERAL Mac-ARTHUR (Japan, Korea, and the Far East), by John Gunther...
...it doesn't exist...
...I confess it difficult to understand that a man who has inspired really revolutionary reforms in Japan, which would never be tolerated in the United States, can be the darling of such reactionaries...
...I have no doubt the general honestly felt what his spokesman, Gen...
...he maneuvers to get newspaper and magazines to correct what he regards as misrepresentation...
...But I can testify that in all matters involving democratic principles and methods I found not a single point of disagreement, and a surprisingly profound conviction—for a military man—of the loftiest values of civilization...
...The reasons for that lie in the general's aloofness to journalists, his poor public relations officers, and the consequent hostility of newspapermen who seek to magnify his faults and belittle his achievements...
...Personal mannerisms also play an undeserved role in the unfavorable impression of the general...
...WHEN I came home from Japan in 1947, after a few months as consultant on civil liberties at the request of the War Department, I suggested to Washington officials some overall policies which Gen...
...It is this sense of mission which doubtless accounts for MacArthur's sensitiveness to criticism of the Occupation...
...Gunther refutes it...
...When I returned from Japan with so favorable a report on the Occupation, I was twitted by friends everywhere who thought I had been taken in by MacArthur charm and V.I.P...
...But that does not cover what a man of such profound convictions, almost religiously held, must regard as his prerogatives of expression...
...That's putting it pretty strong, but it illustrates the point of what constitutes the greatness of human stature—a wide vision, endless faith, dedication to principle, and the power both of courageous thought and decisive action...
...I heard in Tokyo that one of his public relations officers explained he could not let the general meet newspapermen because the general voiced his convictions without thought of what should be on the record and what off...
...2.75...
...neySI has he reminded them that they a«fi people are a defeated nation to be ordered around by a conqueror...
...Critics of the Occupation charge that MacArthur has done the artificial job of attempting to "remake an entire civilization in our own image...
...His assumed omniscience in adding the role of statesman to general without consulting political authorities, which has aroused such distrust of him abroad, is due, I think, rather to lack of any sense of discretion...
...problems of civil liberties, may not qualify me for rounded judgment...
...He would hardly comprehend that voicing such convictions, even to the political opposition, is defiance of directives...
...Gunther rightly says that MacArthur's role in Japan is one of the "worst reported stories in history...
...Way back in 1947 MacArthur openly stated that the time had come for the Occupation to end in a peace treaty...
...Gunther reports the fact...
...One of the mainsprings of Gen...
...Or perhaps that a successful general who hasn't been home for 14 years is bound to be a safe bet...
...He has succeeded with objective honesty in portraying both sides of a complex personality—the greater attributes of a dedicated servant of duty, which scoffers call "destiny"—and the lesser attributes of personal vanities, aloofness, and political naivete...
...240 pp...
...The answer is either that they do not understand him, or that he faces two ways—one way in Japan and the contrary at home...
...Back of these institutional reforms which have laid the basis for wide popular power, stands the historic receptiveness of the Japanese to new ideas, heightened by Mac-Arthur's trust in them...
...Occupations, he held, tend to defeat their own purposes after a few years by becoming established bureaucracies and checking native initiative...
...They dismissed the suggestion on the ground that the general was completely unmanageable by Washington...
...He has capitalized on that good fortune to gather together in one sweeping survey Gen...
...Our ablest foreign reporter who gets inside everything happened to be in Japan at the dramatic moment of the North Korean attack last June, while on a world tour for Look...
...luxury...
...But they argue with the general and he takes advice...
...Douglas MacArthur as general, man, and statesman, an amazingly discerning appraisal of the Occupation of Japan, and the whole gamut of problems raised by the Far Eastern conflict...
...Never has he by word or act treated the Japanese as an inferior people...
...He is credited with rare understanding of the "Oriental mind," a bit of nonsense...
...If I were deceived, so was he...
...It is indeed his very strength that brought about his undoing...
...If the recent suppression of the Communist Party and its press in Japan seems to refute the thesis of open competition between the systems, it is evident that after the outbreak of the Korean war a "clear and present danger" existed which justified a departure from five years' tolerance of Communist propaganda...
...Following that historic action Mr...
...My own experience in Japan a few years ago, limited to a few months, but with rather close cooperation with Gen...
...MacArthur's power is his determination to follow his conviction of what is right—a quality that has made for what John Gunther rightly estimates was his greatness in Japan, but which, when it collides with high government policy, makes for chaos...
...One does not hear much criticism of the general among either Americans or Japanese...
...The general says that "it is the greatest reformation of a people ever attempted," and he believes the the Japanese are already "democratized...
...indeed that many in authority were "afraid of him...
...Gunther cites the criticisms of leading Japanese that the Occupation has attempted too many reforms too fast, that the "lower echelons" of U.S...
...He says that MacArthur's greatest purpose has been to "prove to Asia that democracy is better than Communism," and that he has done it...
...I saw it in operation continuously...
...His gold-braided prose in public announcements gives a false impression of an almost Caesar-like obsession, in contrast, I may say, with the simplicity of his private conversation...
...It is these spiritual qualities of a dedicated man, eloquently expressed, which he correctly says make the general "such an exciting man to meet...
...Considering that, it is a miracle that so much that is so good seems to have taken root in Japan...
...Why not, when the achievements of the Occupation and its "superb psychological handling," as Gunther says, make it stand out as one of the most remarkable efforts in all history to reorganize democratically the whole life of a defeated people suffering from the domination of militarists and autocrats...
...But Gunther points out what any student of the Occupation must realize at once are enduring reforms buttressing democracy—the distribution of land to the peasants who work it, the rise of the trade unions to a powerful position in Japanese life (despite the Occupation's "Taft-Hartley" policy in banning strikes by all public employees), the emancipation of women, the dissolution of the great family trusts, the humanization of the Emperor-deity, and the decentralization of the national controls over education and the police...
...The "riddle" he seeks to solve is the violently contrary estimates of the general...
...His material is so balanced, perceiving, colorfully packed with anecdote that it carries conviction even to doubters of the MacArthur legend of affinity with deity...
...III Nobody can know until the Japanese are on their own...
...He replies personally to its critics...
...I am no hero-worshipper, and I have seen enough of so-called big men to discount the virtues attributed to them...
...MacArthur the qualities which would make of him, if wholly unknown, a character so arresting and unusual that people would be drawn to him by the force of his convictions and the eloquence of his expression...
...The original review follows the asterisks, unchanged...
...Gunther comes out with a similar estimate...
...All alien controls of any civilization bear a heavy burden of evil and error...
...All testimony by those close to MacArthur attributes the strutting, posing and posturing to what few would accept—a persistent shyness, an acute self-consciousness which finds its compensation and defense in the grand manner...
...But they have him wrong on all the evidence of Gunther's study of what he has done as a religious crusader for basic democracy in Japan, and of what I saw myself...
...Of course, the main appeal of the book* is directed to an understanding of the enigmatic personality of Gen...
...MacArthur in the setting of his accomplishments in Japan and in his conduct of the war in Korea...
...Like Gunther I circulated widely and freely, mostly among the Japanese...
...Since the general's very nature eliminated the chance of either silencing him or changing his views, his ouster was inevitable...
...Gunther reports that he discourages "yes men" around him, though it is well-known that he has a devoted staff of admiring cronies...
...The general with his sure faith and sense of mission is given to overly optimistic interpretations...
...His recall obviously rests on a long record of collisions with Washington...
...Douglas MacArthur might implement...
...Courtney Whitney, has publicly stated—that he believed he scrupulously followed directives...
...Respect and admiration are the current attitudes...
...It looks like vanity, even "theatrical hamminess", but, as Gunther says, there is a vanity so deeply rooted in a sense of mission that combined with shyness is in fact no longer personal...
...Baldwin wrote a new introduction, embodied in the material preceding the asterisks...
...Harper & Brothers...
...II Of course, there is the "other side...
...And it is the wide public understanding of his stature that makes the conflict of authority so tragic and yet gives him, in the moment of his official fall, the measure not of a martyr to politics but what is rightly sensed as profound integrity of character...
...It's a fair conclusion neither of us was, and that the facts make our case...
Vol. 15 • May 1951 • No. 5
