OUR JOB IN JAPAN

...The program of this party was not "revolutionary...

...In Japan's home islands, there should be no question of divided and conflicting authorities as in Germany...

...We must work for the terms outlined in the Potsdam Declaration...

...If we carry out the avowed aims of the Potsdam Declaration, the forces of peace and reason will dominate Japan, democratic self-government will be established, and Japanese aggression and Imperial ambitions will never again threaten its neighbors and rivals...

...Only in a grave crisis such as the present does a member of the Imperial House take an active part in political life...

...If we want a peaceful, friendly, democratic Japan, we can have it...

...they will not endure the latter, nor support Communists or Fascists in the irresponsible destruction which paves the way for dictatorial absolutism...

...From now on, for years to come, the answer to this lies largely in our hands...

...War Minister Gen...

...Most of Japan's rural families are connected with such cooperatives...

...Sometimes these things can be developed under a monarchy...

...We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation, but stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners...

...The Japanese Parliament had not been asked in advance...

...Never at any time, during that period, did we give our support to democratic forces in Japan...

...We cooperated with the Japanese militarists at that time, and continued to finance and supply them right down to 1941...

...If and when surrender is completed, the American Government will take prime responsibility for further developments in Japan...

...Never did we make any move against them until July 1941—when they moved into French' Indo-China, a European colony...

...there are no alternatives," were as follows -. "There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest...

...The new Premier, Baron Shidehara, objected...

...WE need not doubt that the punitive clauses of the Potsdam demands will be fulfilled...

...We can, under our military demands, call for the abolition of conscription in Japan...

...As an aftermath of the London Naval Conference, Premier Hamaguchi was assassinated by a Japanese patriomaniac inspired by the militarists...

...With politically democratic institutions on the downward path, the institutions of economic democracy grew...

...They have brought great suffering and distress upon the Japanese people, who more than ever before yearn desperately for a period of peace...

...Freedom of speech, of religion and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights, shall be established...

...there is in fact very little left of it now...

...THE position of the Emperor is one which has been embarrassing for the American Government, owing to the easy exploitation of democratic feeling by those among us who desired to continue the war indefinitely—for various purposes...

...One high-ranking officerfollowed another—and even military and naval men began to be the victims of assassination by "radical" officers, as in the great blood-purge of Tokyo in 1936...

...We not only supplied them with the means of war against China down to that year, but even financed the monstrous business by enormous purchases of gold stolen by the Japanese from Manchuria and silver stolen by them from other parts of China, which' the Morgenthau Treasury purchased at enormously, inflated prices...

...We insist that a new order of peace, security, and justice will be impossible until irresponsible militarism is driven from the world...

...Japanese critics were silenced...

...Freedom of speech and thought, respect for "fundamental human rights," and the "revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people" mean that political parties and labor and other organizations should again emerge, that elections should be held—on a basis of popular suffrage—without police interference or pressure, and that the representative parliament so chosen should be regarded as the proper center of sovereignty in Japan...

...Yukio Ozaki, the great Japanese democratic leader who has been elected to every Parliament for the past half-century, once described the Throne as a bulwark for the militarists and navalists of Japan, who hid behind it and from its secure protection shot at Parliament: "Their bullets are Imperial decrees...

...Japan has the biggest cooperative network in the world, with more than 5,000,000 members in its consumers' societies, agricultural cooperatives, and mutual credit societies...

...Mayor La Guardia recently informed his New York radio audience that Emperor Hirohito should be beaten and kicked to death—"just as the Italians did with Mussolini...

...A few months later, the Japanese Army launched its unprovoked invasion of Manchuria...

...This was an excellent description...

...And we might give ourselves the same blessing...

...Then, and not until then, did we take economic action against them...

...Most of the Japanese I have known best were quite hostile to the institution of monarchy...

...The Army would take no more chances with an electorate moving rapidly to the democratic "left...

...Any group which looks up to Communist dictatorship as a "democratic" form of society is not to be taken seriously when it starts denouncing any institution as "antidemocratic...

...It is important to realize, however, that the Emperor has seldom ruled...

...But that was the last free election...

...The alternative to "irresponsible militarism" is responsible democratic government, in the hands of the people...

...They became allies of Western countries...

...The basic question, as stated clearly in a preliminary paragraph of the Potsdam Declaration, is whether Japan "will continue to be controlled by those self-willed militaristic advisers whose unintelligent calculations have brought the empire of Japan to the threshold of annihilation, or whether she will follow the path of reason...

...But we must keep firmly in mind that there are two alternatives to monarchy: democracy and dictatorship...

...Japanese trade unions became "Labor fronts" or were dissolved...

...The militarists are utterly discredited...

...THE only democratic institutions remaining were economic ones—the cooperatives...

...The future of the monarch should then be decided by the Japanese people themselves...

...The economic controls^which have been established by Japan's military oligarchs may revert either to a democratic parliament or to cooperative societies—or to a combination of the two—but they should not be returned to the Japanese plutocracy which so exploited and impoverished the Japanese people until the militarists replaced them as chief bloodsuckers...

...Foreign powers possessed those same privileges down to 50 years ago in Japan...

...Because of this they were able to survive and grow...

...The Japanese military forces, after being completely disarmed, shall be permitted to return to their homes with the opportunity to lead peaceful and productive lives...

...IT is important for us to realize that the most violent hostility to the Japanese Emperor, among ourselves, has not come from the elements most interested in the promotion of democracy...

...It is not through the enormously wealthy families of the Mit-suis and Mitsumishis, but through the co-ops, that Japanese economic democracy can advance...

...The militarists were supreme...

...It is the only hope...

...It had increasing support not only from labor but from clerical workers, professional people, and farmers...

...We can ask for the creation of a representative, responsible government in Japan, through free elections on the suffrage basis of 10 years ago—a system with which the Japanese are familiar...

...If the Throne had suddenly disappeared, this would not necessarily mean that the Army and Navy would stop shooting at Parliament...

...Minami calmly ordered his troops from Manchuria to Korea, and informed the civilian Premier that this was "within the jurisdiction of the Army...

...Japanese cooperative associations continued, but with strict abstention from political activities of any kind...

...From that time on, as the Army increasingly consolidated its position in Manchuria and from there dominated Japan itself, the position of civilian Premiers became hopeless...

...We must keep firmly in mind that the situation to which Japan is now to be subjected—with foreign garrisons in Japanese ports, foreign control of Japan's foreign trade, foreign patrolling of Japan's coasts, etc.—is not new...

...Democrats want the former...

...It was under the Anglo-Japanese Alliance that they started their first successful series of wholesale aggressions...

...Even when war was under way, Parliament was not asked for a formal declaration...

...that was beyond their power...

...What they want is to substitute their own form of absolutism for some other form...

...We can work with such a government—if we wish...

...If it is our intention to promote the forces of peace and democracy in Japan, we have every opportunity to do so...

...THE actual record of Japanese parliamentary development shows the steady increase in self-assertion of the Japanese people, through their parliamentary representatives and their own independent organizations, for a half-century down to 1930, when the Hamaguchi Government aided in the success of the London Naval Conference and seemed to be applying a brake to the exorbitant demands and ambitions of Japanese navalists...

...Like the King of England and Emperor of India, he reigns rather than rules...

...Certainly, the tremendous power of the Emperor in the Japanese Constitution is ultimately incompatible with democratic sovereignty...

...The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established, in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people, a peacefully inclined and responsible Government...

...If we do not carry out these aims, there will be another war—far more frightful than the one now ending...

...It was even possible that there would be no Parliament...

...The civilian forces behind the Hamaguchi Government, representing the strongest party in the elective Parliament, were Japanese business elements, anxious to get away from the heavy burdens of Japanese militarism and to promote peaceful industry and commerce...

...The other group consists of the racialists—the hate-mongers like Halsey, Bilbo, La Guardia, etc., who detest the Japanese as "bestial apes," and would like to see the Japanese Emperor hanged just as they would like to see any other colored man hanged...

...We want more democracy—and always more...

...Parliament (usually termed the Diet) still exists, in a way, but the liquidation of the various parties has left it little of a representative nature, and there has been no free election since the Spring of 1937...

...The Army detested and resented this entire civilian group...

...sometimes they cannot...

...The terms announced at Potsdam on July 26 by the American, Chinese, and British Governments (subsequently adhered to by the Soviet Government), regarding which we declared that "we will not deviate from them...

...Self-willed militarists" launched the attack on the Chinese in the Peking area in July 1937, telling their Japanese subjects that they had been "treacherously attacked" by the Chinese...

...They did so, however, by strict abstention from politics...

...A few months later, they were forced to resign...

...shouters...

...If it is not fulfilled it is because the American Government does not wish to fulfill it...

...It is up to American and other international cooperative societies to re-establish relations with Japanese cooperatives, and to insist that they have opportunities for expansion and for greater responsibility than they have hitherto possessed...

...Japan shall be permitted to maintain such industries as will sustain her economy and permit the exaction of just reparations in kind, but not those which would enable her to rearm for war...

...The Japanese Government has appointed an Imperial prince as Prime Minister, since no one but a member of the royal house is likely to escape assassination from Japanese super-patriots in endeavoring to get Japan's millions of hard-bitten soldiers to lay down their arms...

...The reversal of this process means the re-establishment and strengthening of the Japanese Parliament, which is the proper organ for expressing the will of the Japanese people...

...But we should understand that Ozaki was not and is not a republican—any more than most British laborites are republicans...

...Through eight years of war, the militarists consolidated their power and developed an essentially totalitarian government in Japan...

...America was one of those Powers—and had been from the beginning, in the 1860's...

...But the failure of the old "business" parties to stand more firmly against Army domination resulted in the growth of a more radical party in Japan -—the Shakai Minshuto or "Socialist People's Party...

...The really important terms, in regard to the future,, are those which constitute a program for a new order of things in Japan...

...There are two main groups of "Hang the Emperor...

...If the Japanese monarch were to become a creature of a democratically chosen Parliament, instead of a creature of the militarists and navalists, the basis would be securely laid for a free, democratic, and peaceful Japan...

...The common people of Japan did not choose this war...

...The Japanese Government shall remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people...

...The basic question is control of the throne...

...We can utilize this feeling—-if we wish...

...The terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out and Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, and such minor islands as we determine...

...The Socialist People's Party—like other parties—was in time forced to "liquidate...

...It was principally American power that defeated Japan, and future responsibilities will be ours...

...The Communist and fellow-traveler group believes that hereditary monarchy is a terrible evil, but that personal non-hereditary dictatorship is just wonderful...

...In the words of the Allied note to Japan, the "ultimate form of government of Japan" should "be established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people...

...But he, again, proved insufficiently "cooperative," and was himself assassinated after a few months...

...To this end, access to, as distinguished from control of, raw materials shall be permitted...

...There is no record of any of these persons having favored Japanese democracy, at any time...

...We must work to promote the forces of peace and democracy, not to promote a Japanese militarism which will be our agent or ally for further wars—whether against Russia, China, or anyone else...

...Genuine believers in democracy believe in the creation of representative machinery, for direct and free elections, and a jury system...

...even their hostility to monarchy leaves out the Rumanian monarchy—which happens to be working as a puppet for Stalin, and is therefore "progressive...

...These, however, will not determine the future...

...They were encroaching upon White Imperialism in the Far East I * * * IT is with the remembrance of this record that we must realize the task before us...

...Japanese political parties were forced to liquidate...

...THIS is our job in Japan...

...It depends on us...

...The choice is ours...

...No enduring peace can rest upon punishment, vengeance, and fear...

...Another civilian, Inukai, made an agreement with the Army and became Premier...

...It was during that period, indeed, that the centralized monarchy of Japan was established, and that we encouraged the Japanese militarists and navalists and started them off on the frightful road to Empire...

...As the war intensified and expanded, year after year, the militarists increased their power...

...To support democratic elements in Japan, we must jettison eompletely, our "policies" of the past 80 years with regard to Japan...

...In Japan, unlike England in recent centuries, the monarch has been mainly a creature of military bureaucrats, instead of a creature of Parliament and its dominant elements...

...The civilian ministers were helpless...

...In the last "free" election in Japan, in 1937, it elected about 10 per cent of the members of Parliament, and was gaining the balance of power between the two larger parties...

...But they could not limit the militarists' burdens upon the people...

...Business men were forced into line, adapted themselves to the new situation, and made what they could out of it...

...It was essentially similar to the British Labor Party in its aims and appeals...

...Until such a new order is established and until there is convincing proof that Japan's war-making power is destroyed, points in Japanese territory to be designated by the Allies shall be occupied to secure the achievement of the basic objectives we are here setting forth...