FLAG OF HOPE-OR OF HATE?
Howard, Harry Paxton
Flag Of Hope—Or Of Hate? By HARRY PAXTON HOWARD GEN. Douglas MacArthur on Sept. 8 drove into Tokyo, capital of defeated Japan, with a single squadron of American cavalry. As happens with other...
...We may accept the idea of a permanent conflict for ultimate domination, and look forward to war with the Soviet Union—which has now become the dominant power on the continent of Asia...
...We have not achieved Utopia, and never shall...
...If we are to survive, we must use our tremendous weight and influence for the organization of permanent peace...
...He waited in the Yokohama road 15 minutes, then got another car to carry him into the devastated capital...
...And we expanded westward...
...Some of the "original" states, through the terrible anachronism of slavery and its after-products of inequality and discrimination, still rank far below most states in the essentials of democracy...
...It was a concept basically hostile to the whole democratic fabric upon which our Republic was founded...
...And in terms of human freedom and welfare some of the "conquered" western states rank higher than some of the "original" eastern...
...We now play the major part...
...If our country cannot be saved from the Imperialists who look forward to another war a generation hence, we have no choice...
...But we do so at our peril...
...If we are to move forward in Asia towards the great goals of our own Republic—the co-operation of free and democratic peoples in a free world—we again have no choice...
...But we devised for the first time in history a program for democratic expansion which was basically sound and effective...
...The American general declined...
...However devious, brutal, and aggressive much of our expansion has been, the fundamental virtues of our system kept us a republic...
...But at the very foundation of the Republic, the founding fathers in their wisdom devised a system ^by which we would not become a new empire, ruling over subject peoples and territories on this continent...
...When a yellow man is down, kick him...
...The United States chose a way of expansion which was unique in the world...
...There has been discrimination, exploitation, injustice...
...So they were murdered...
...No peace can rest on a policy of hatred and insensate revenge on a beaten people...
...But when we were pushed—in 1898—into war in the Far East, we became an active participant in the struggle for Asiatic dominion...
...But they opposed, from one viewpoint or another, the rule of the Japanese military gangs, the subordination of Japanese life to the requirements of military expansion, the suppression of civil liberty in one aspect or another in Japan...
...No provision had ever been made in the American Constitution for our flag to wave over permanently subject peoples...
...We are as capable of such things as are any people...
...What shall we say of these people ? Were they "bestial apes," as the New York Herald Tribune and Mayor La Guardia scream...
...Such is the spirit that may, if carried out with sincerity and loyalty, mean a new day for Japan and for the world...
...Their native inhabitants did not remain "subjects...
...As happens with other Americans at times, his auto broke down en route...
...I was myself a victim of the Japanese police, and was finally deported by the Japanese Government...
...Our flag advanced to the shores of the Pacific, and the "conquered" territories became free and self-governing states...
...Some of the finest people I have ever known were deliberately murdered by Japanese militarists and armed police...
...The Japanese Government offered to line the three-mile route with armed police...
...Whatever we may do towards Japanese militarists, it must be guided by justice and not revenge, and must aim at the ultimate end of destroying completely their influence over Japanese political life, in order that the forces of Japanese democracy may grow and strengthen themselves free from terrorism and violence...
...Eichelberger, commander of the Eighth Army which is now garrisoning Tokyo, and said: "Gen...
...Those victims had and have my warm and sincere sympathy—as they should have that of every decent, freedom-loving, peace-loving American...
...We were established as a republic, but our colonists moved towards open land, and repeatedly came into conflict with the Indian inhabitants...
...For the atomic age is one of lightning and terrible destruction, and our great and teeming cities are the most perfect targets in the world...
...Instead, it was specifically laid down that new territories acquired should be entitled and should be prepared for self-government, and that when self-governing institutions were established they could apply for admission to the Union as states...
...But this great process of democratic expansion, by which we developed from a little federation of two million people to a mighty republic of 135 millions in 48 states, stopped at the shore of the Pacific...
...We no longer play a minor part in these struggles for Asiatic dominion...
...Which road shall we take...
...And the Japanese people are watching most closely, to see whether we are going to be "tough" to the people and "soft" to the militarists...
...Beyond the vast ocean lay Asia—not a field for American colonization, but only a field for Empire...
...Or is it to be, as Gen...
...We must have the Japanese—and other Asiatic peoples— as our friends and collaborators in the building of that world...
...Harbinger of victory for the right...
...They have come up from slavery, and their peoples are increasingly calling for and gaining the realities of democratic life...
...But whatever the future is to be, the relentless logic of our treatment of Japan is that we must be honorable and just to our defeated foes...
...We must have the Japanese as our allies, and must treat them with this in view...
...They are minds which are essentially hostile to-all the ideals of equal liberty, the pursuit of happiness, (and to life itself upon which democracy is based...
...But the very day that this was proclaimed in Tokyo, some newspapers in the United States were furiously demanding that we be "tough" with the oppressed people of Japan, that we hang the Emperor who had accepted our drastic terms for surrender, that we should cynically ignore and violate all the promises of popular liberation that we made at Potsdam, that we should treat the surrendered people with a brutality and violence outdoing anything the British have done in India or the Soviet in Poland...
...They are the forces which have pushed us forward in the past and are pushing us forward today towards Asiatic dominion...
...They were of various origins and viewpoints—like Americans who love peace and who love democracy...
...Scores of outstanding persons whom I never met were similarly murdered by militarist and patriomaniac assassins...
...There, General MacArthur stood alone before Lt...
...Near the Imperial Palace the squadron of Seventh Cavalry alighted from their trucks for the short march to the American Embassy...
...But even they have not "retrograded...
...But there is basically nothing mysterious about it...
...These people would make us the great World Empire, with the American flag the symbol of ruthless might and aggressive domination over weaker peoples...
...Eichelberger, have our country's flag unfurled and in Tokyo's sun let it wave in its full glory as a symbol of hope for the oppressed and as a harbinger of victory for the right...
...Were they "feudal-minded" barbarians, as the poison-papers of Marshall Field and William Randolph Hearst tell us in their daily doses of viciousness and hatred ? Or were they people with whom we could really cooperate for a peaceful and stable world, with the power of militarists forever ended and imperialism replaced by the free cooperation of equal peoples ? * * * IT is remarkable that the most vicious, hate-monger-ing, racialist elements in the American press are in essential agreement with the Japanese militarists whom they most violently denounce...
...Our republic was based upon a rebellion "against imperial domination, upon our right to be free...
...We are being too soft," screamed the stay-at-home patriots...
...Whether we hold the flag "as a symbol of hope for the oppressed," and faithfully fulfill our promises for a free Japan liberated from the militarists who plunged their country into the terrible holocaust of war, or whether we make the American flag a symbol of oppression and revenge on a prostrate people, with American militarists replacing Japanese as ruthless oppressors, is more than a question of morality and sentiment...
...Virginia, far the greatest of the original states, did_ not beeome hegemonic in a group of 13 states, and extend the power of this group westward to the Pacific...
...OUR system was not perfect...
...MacArthur said in simple words at Tokyo, "a symbol of hope for the oppressed and a harbinger of victory for the right ?" Which shall it be ? The decision is in our hands...
...We have become the dominant power in the western Pacific, with a foothold on the Asiatic continent itself...
...If we are looking for something "mysterious" in human mentality, we may find it in this meeting of American Imperialist and Japanese Imperialist minds...
...Ultimately, they became citizens of the great Republic...
...There is nothing "mysterious" about the Japanese mind...
...It concerns the entire future of the Far East, our reputation, our standing in the eyes of Asiatic peoples, our chances for enduring peace...
...Unless we follow this, we have no claim to put anyone on trial as a "war criminal...
...There were brutal wars of aggression and conquest...
...Virginia voluntarily gave up its great territories west of the Appalachians...
...It is repeatedly their assertion, as it has been that of the Japanese militarists, that Japan is "unfit" for democracy, that the Japanese people are a special "breed" who don't want such "Western importations...
...This is the logic, and the only logic, of the situation...
...But if our "trials" are to be lynchings of yellow men, we shall rouse a terrible and lasting hatred which can only play into the hands of all our enemies in Asia and elsewhere, and make inevitable a real war for survival a generation hence...
...I lived in Japan for five years...
...IF we single out, justly and properly, the militarists who have been the enemies of peace and democracy in the Far East, we shall find—as we are already finding—ever-increasing numbers of Japanese who will look to us as friends and liberators...
...The victims of whom I am writing were Japanese— Japanese labor men, Japanese Socialists and syndicalists, Japanese business men, Japanese politicians, Japanese pacifists...
...What is the meaning of the American flag to be during the days, months, and years to come ? Is it to be what a British visitor bitterly termed it after a trip to the Slave South a century ago, before the Civil War: "Where bastard freedom waves Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves...
...Symbol of hope for the oppressed...
...But we got into it, and became the allies instead of the enemies of Imperial domination over subject peoples...
...Asiatic peoples are watching us today...
Vol. 9 • September 1945 • No. 38
