MACARTHUR AND FREEDOM
Pflaum, Irving
MacArthur And Freedom By IRVING PFLAUM (Foreign Affairs Analyst for the Chicago Daily Times) MACARTHUR is following the best of American traditions in his orders to the Jap government. Our kids...
...His methods are well suited for creating a peaceful and self-governing Japan in the future—which is our, and should be our Allies', main purpose...
...Last week he ordered a Magna Charta for the Japs, granting them freedom of expression, of worship and of assembly...
...Second, he instructed the Jap government to encourage labor unions, to give them an influential voice "in safeguarding the working man from exploitation and raising his living standard...
...Our job, as MacArthur sees it, is to give the Japs a fair chance, to stand by to correct their "mistakes" but not to rule them until they have shown themselves incapable of ruling themselves—as free men...
...And then he added five more orders enlarging their liberty and individual rights...
...afford the people protection against despotic, arbitrary and unjust methods...
...Unlike Allied commanders in Germany, MacArthur is liberating a conquered people without substituting an alien despotism for the defeated tyrants...
...THIS five-point program, plus freedom of expression, worship and assembly, is intended to provide for the liberation of the Japanese by the Japanese...
...THJRD, he ordered the schools to follow a more liberal policy so "that the people may benefit from an understanding of a system under which the government becomes servant rather thaji master of the people...
...Fourth, MacArthur ordered abolished the Jap system of inquisition and abuse (in courts and prisons) "substituting therefor a system of justice designed to...
...Our kids will have something to boast about when they get around to reading the history of his administration of Japan if he continues to treat the Japs as he has started...
...Constitutional changes will be made to protect the people's rights...
...First, MacArthur ordered the emancipation of women, so they could vote and, "through being members of the body politic . . . bring to Japan a new concept of government directly subservient to the well-being of the home...
...And fifth, he instructed the Japs to develop economic methods "which tend to insure a wide distribution of income and ownership of the means of production and trade...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 42
