25 March 2008

Japan Rising


Dai Ichi Insurance Company- aka SCAP GHQ

I dragged my butt up from the garage when the working day was done. I hate Mondays. I pounced on everything that popped up on my screen, but there was no motion on the projects I am bird-dogging. . I checked for packages with Amari the Ethiopian at the desk at Big Pink.

The government is even more sluggish than usual and can't seem to get out of its own way. I know the sap must be rising in the contract shop, but in the chill early Spring air, you couldn't tell.

The news from overseas is mixed. No one is reporting what is going on, only the personal details of the last dozen American kids who were killed there, mostly by those infernal IEDs. It is too dangerous to actually report from theater, and it is much easier (and cheaper) to cover the war from here, where people have lost interest.

I wondered if there was another letter from Tom. He is sequestered up in the Hills of West-by-God and trying to organize his papers. I was in luck. There was one of the little hard-sided envelopes for sending pictures, and several pages of manuscript folded in half.

I read them after I cooked dinner for my son. His next big project, after the 52-inch television, is the acquisition of a toaster oven and a coffee maker. He is employed to predict the future by the government.

He is lucky to have the gift. I can't even predict the past.

Before departing, my son showed me how to work the “on demand” feature on the cable box. I had no idea the capability existed. I punched up the show that he had recommended- an HBO biopic on John Adams, and the images of the Boston Massacre flickered over the pages as I read under the yellow light from the incandescent bulb in the comfy brown chair.

The letter sent me tumbling into other-where. It started out philosophically:

“There is an old saying that a wise man climbs Fujiyama once, and a fool climbs it twice. It is the Japanese way of saying that you should only have to learn hard things one time.

The sad thing is that the horrors of war fade. If we truly remembered, as a people, and shared the sacrifice, I we might not get ourselves into these things. Sometimes we pick fights, and sometimes they are thrust upon us. That is what derailed everything in the summer of 1950. I was there to impose order on the comfortable arrangements that had grown up between some of the US Navy people assigned to the base at Yokosuka. General MacArthur was making great strides in re-making Japanese society to one more of our liking.

He could have stayed there as the military dictator for years, except for the North Koreans. When they came south across the border, the Occupation as we had come to know it was over. American troops were needed across the Tsushima Straits, and that meant that Japan would have to be re-armed, and they would have to take more responsibility for their own affairs. That would make the counterintelligence mission that much more challenging.

I was in Tokyo when the cherry blossoms erupted on the trees that remained around the moat of the Imperial Palace. The Emperor still lived within the steeply curving basalt-block walls, while across the dark water the American Shogun worked from the imposing white-pillared SCAP GHQ.

The cherry blossoms are lovely, if perishable. The best are said to be in the area around Chinhai, in Southern Korea, and the Japanese liked what they saw there when they colonized the country. They have planted them everywhere they went, in Japan of course, and in China when they occupied Manchuria. They even gave some nice ones to Washington, DC, which later always reminded me of the start of my career in the intel business.

I had a couple weeks training in Tokyo itself, as I mentioned, learning about rules of evidence under military law, and how the Japanese civil system coexisted with Occupation rules.

There were three main places that the Supreme Commander Allied Powers put people up in Tokyo: the Shiba Park Hotel, the Sanno and the Union Club, right near the Imperial Palace. General MacArthur, SCAP himself, lived at the embassy. The Shiba Park was known as satisfactory, though not elegant, and the Sanno was right between the Ropunggi and Akasaka neighborhoods that were ginning to get their nightlife back and the liberty was good.

The Sanno had been one of the first earth-quake proof modern buildings built in the capital after the devastating earthquake of 1923. The shock had measured 8.3 on the Richter Scale, and since it happened just around lunchtime, people were cooking over open flames. The resulting fires devastated the city.

The Japanese response to the disaster typified the way they respond to adversity. Preparations had been poor, and to avoid losing face, the government diverted attention to the local Korean population, saying that they had used the quake as an excuse for looting and arson in protest of the colonization of their country. The Japanese militarists responded aggressively in a sort of government riot that was a prelude to what would happen at Nanking a dozen years later.

The government said at the time that a few hundred had perished in the violent suppression of the unrest. It was not until after the war that the archives were opened and the truth came out. Thousands of Koreans were killed.

At the same time, the resiliency of the Japanese people was apparent. They rebuilt Tokyo quickly, replacing the one- and two-storied wood and brick structures with modern five-and-six story buildings of concrete and steel in the European manner. Streets wide enough for cars were plowed through the neighborhoods, and the first subway was dug.

Unfortunately, many of the flimsy wood structures were built, too, so what survived the Allied bombings of the war were the concrete shells of the new buildings like the Sanno surrounded by nothing at all.

The area around the Imperial Palace where the Union Club was located was pretty much untouched. The Dai Ichi Insurance Company building was occupied by SCAP HQ; many Americans worked in the Radio Tokyo Building, and the sleek Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Imperial Hotel was not far away.

The Union Club had been built in the 1930s as the Tokyo Kaikan. It was a plush place. We ate here in a well-appointed dining room, served by Japanese waitresses who were happy to have jobs. They delivered to our white clothed-dining tables the best food a generous Uncle Sam military could provide. The charge for lodging was purely nominal, and for three squares a day we were charged about a buck. Cartons of PX cigarettes were cheap, and there was a ration of good Japanese beer and American whiskey.

The contrast between the subsidized prices available to us was mirrored by anarchy on the civilian economy that had raged during the first years after the occupation began. For the Americans, access to luxury goods was not regulated by price, but by rationing. It was a constant temptation. Ration cards marked the qualities of commodities we consumed, and new cards were issued each month.

It was not just tobacco and alcohol, of course. It was the common stuff of life, like specific food items. I remember mayonnaise was a hot item, go figure. Most of the crime in the early days of the Occupation was related directly to food.

The strict, though relatively generous ration control system was how everything was metered out, and the cause of most of the corruption in the Occupation Forces. For those that could get around it, there was easy money to be made. In no small part that was why I was headed down to Yoko to clean things up.

The last months before the Korean War started were the zenith of the American Shogunate. They had many names for General MacArthur. “Dougout Doug” was one that survived from the war in the Pacific, for his habit of amassing overwhelming force before attacking the enemy.

Here in Tokyo they called him the American Mikado, after the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, and the circus that attended his every public movement made it appropriate. He was the living embodiment of the Shoguns of old times. Since the end of the war he had been the absolute authority over everything that happened in the theatre. That included the disposition of millions of Japanese troops stranded in China when hostilities ended.

They were left to get home however they could, and the old social fabric was dislocated. Crime as we know it did not exist; you were safe as can be walking around the downtown, but people did what they had to do to survive. The rise of the New Woman was part of the dislocation of society, since so many men had either been killed or transported.

The more senior they had been in the old regime, they more they were reviled in society.

Things had settled down after the wild first days of the occupation. In early 1946 one destroyer escort had made a portcall in Sasebo and bought out what was left in town with money produced from a Monopoly board game. Now the Americans and their hosts had a pretty good idea about what made each other tick, or at least the Japanese did.

It was a strange time still in Japan, and while Tokyo was bustling again, the scars of war were still raw and fresh where the firestorms had raged. You could see it plainly from the train going south through Yokohama, where the giant Mitubishi plant had been located.

We pasted that pretty good, and the area on the hills above was the home to much of the American Army. The grandstand to the old race course eas still there, a PX operating from its lower level.

South of Yokohama, the damage was not so apparent, since bombing had been restricted there with an eye to using the facility after the invasion went ashore.

When Commodore Perry arrived with his Black Ships in 1853, Yokosuka was a quiet fishing village. In the process of opening up Japan, it became a shipyard capable of handling large European-style ships. At the time of the American Civil War, it was called the "Yokosuka Iron Works". In 1871, the name was changed to the "Yokosuka Navy Yard." As a prime operating base of the Imperial Navy, five aircraft carriers had been built or home-ported there.

When the fighting ended in 1945, IJN Vice Admiral Michitaro Totsuka Commander of the Yokosuka Naval Base, surrendered his command to Rear Admiral Robert Carney, supported by a detachment of the 6th Marine Division, some Royal Marines and US Navy units. The Naval Base was rechristened Commander Fleet Activities Yokosuka (CFAY). The Navy decided to deactivate the shipyard, and brought in a tender to take care of voyage repairs for visiting ships. Much of the equipment was sent to other countries as part of reparations. The hospital became a Naval Dispensary, and the Supply Department was tasked with providing full support to the U.S. Fleet and shore-based activities.

The legendary Captain Benny Decker was just departing when I arrived. He had been CFAY since April of 1946. The base was in pretty good shape when he took over, as a consequence of the light treatment it received as a target.

Tojo's yacht was still in the harbor, turned turtle and forlorn, but the big gray Japanese ships that had survived the war were dispatched quickly. The mighty IJN battleship Nagato and the others were sent to the A-Bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946.

With the harbor depopulated, Captain Decker and his staff were able to devote their time to helping the townspeople of Yokosuka. The relationship was oddly symbiotic between the conquered and their conquerors. I began to appreciate that the moment I walked up to the Police Headquarters to find the Provost Marshall office and report for duty.

The Americans and the Japanese had become entwined in a way that would have been quite unthinkable just a few years ago. The two became interlinked economically, politically and socially. Not to mention sexually.

Independent contracts trolled the street of the Honch to cater to the sailor trade, but this was a heavily nuanced situation, as were all things in Japan. As there was rank and privledge in the uniforms of the conquerers, there was a corresponding structure outside the gate of the base. Nothing was what it seemed, at least a first glance. Like Kiko.

She wore the most fashionable western gowns when the circumstance required, low cut, off the shoulder. but her makeup was still the alabaster of the giesha. She could tell you a lot about what was really going on, if you asked the right way.

It was the month of June, 1950.

Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com