740.00119 Control (Japan)/5–2748
The Acting Political Adviser in Japan (Sebald) to the Secretary of State
No. 308
[Received June 9.]
Sir: I have the honor to submit herein a recapitulation of the Occupation’s program of disqualifying certain Japanese from holding particular positions and employment. Although we are aware that the Department has studied with care the documents relating to the purge, the present compact presentation may serve to bring into focus those facts which in our view are essential to any sound decisions for final disposition of this important and somewhat controversial matter.
I
The purge program as a bulk operation came to an end on May 10, 1948 when the previous machinery for its administration was terminated. Future new applicants for public office will require screening if they have not been previously screened, and this will be accomplished by the Prime Minister or (for local office) the prefectural governor concerned. The functioning of the purge as regards the ultra-nationalistic societies will continue as a responsibility of the Attorney General. The Government Section of this Headquarters looks upon the purge as being statistically complete on May 10, and in fact has in preparation a definitive history of the program. (There is always a lag of about a month in availability of purge statistics, which will be true also of the May 10 figures.)
[Page 786]To keep clear to the Japanese and others the intention of the Occupation that completion of the purge in no way implies relaxation of its incidence, the announcement on March 25, 1948 of impending changes in purge procedure was followed by a release a week later in the name of the chief of the Government Section to the effect that the purge program is a direct requirement of Japan’s acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration and that final action thereunder will unquestionably hold future Japanese governments fully responsible (see the Mission’s airgram No. 66, April 3, 1948). It would appear that the chief of Government Section desires to cause the Japanese to expect that the peace settlement will provide against any undoing of the purge.
[Here follows summary of purge procedure and statistics.]
IV
The basis which has been consistently cited for the various steps of the purge program has been the declaration at Potsdam*, accepted by Japan in its surrender. It would appear unnecessary to labor the point that, so far as the mandatory provisions of the Potsdam Declaration are concerned, nothing in their terms required the carrying out of the purge on anything like the numerical scale on which it has in fact been enforced. The very large majority of the 210,000 persons who have been disqualified were so far from authority and influence that any assertion of their having deceived and misled the people of Japan would be ludicrous. On the mother hand other provisions of the declaration, while not rendering mandatory any such institution as the purge developed into, contemplated changes in Japan of such nature as have been advanced (in the judgment of its proponents) by the purposes of the purge. The most pertinent of such provisions occurs in paragraph 10 (“The Japanese Government shall remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people”). It was the considered judgment of Government Section, on which had fallen the responsibility of reshaping the governing system of Japan into a modern institution, that the removal of all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people could not be brought about without a major alteration in Japanese leadership, which in turn could not be brought about without the purge.
There need be no mystery as to the developing state of mind in Government Section which led to the change in the purge from a program against irresponsible militarism to a program for the complete alteration of the leadership and control of Japan. Government Section, the body dealing with the Japanese Government and its reform, found [Page 787] its efforts rigidly circumscribed and practically neutralized by the Japanese attribute of conforming to the formalities of change without accepting its substance. Decision was made to make use of the relatively brief years of the Occupation in the effort to speed reforms which cannot be counted upon for execution by the Japanese after withdrawal of the Occupation. The purge was guided premeditatedly for political ends: Government Section is full of memoranda for or against the purging of a particular individual, frankly arguing on the basis of future usefulness or otherwise of the concerned individual to the Japanese political program which it is the policy of the Occupation to promote.
V
The effect on the Japanese nation produced by the purge is in some ways difficult to appraise but in certain respects can be estimated with considerable confidence.
The high degree of acceptance of and cooperation with the program is the first surprise. This reaction of the Japanese public at large appears to be in part a measure of the considerable success of the Occupation’s stress upon Japan’s former great vulnerability to misguided leadership, coupled with the conviction that the former leadership can really not be shaken without severe treatment even if that severe treatment inevitably entails some individual inequities in its application. In part the generally favorable reaction of the Japanese public to the purge derives from a sense of relief that the consequences of defeat have not been worse. Purgees are barred from office; they are not placed in concentration camps, nor is their property confiscated, nor are they disqualified from other forms of employment.
In the political world the purge’s efficacy in displacing leaders who would otherwise even now be in control of the political scene is unquestionable. Here the point of doubt, on the other hand, is whether the exclusion of the natural political leaders can be sustained long enough to permit a new and strong leadership to develop. There would be no point in wilfully blinding ourselves to the clear fact that, in the existing rudimentary stage of growth of new political talent, successive Japanese cabinets are not of such competence as would permit of their standing on their own feet against all comers without Occupation support. If the purge were to be suddenly washed out, there would go with it much of the Occupation’s effort to develop new leadership among the Japanese; it has not yet been brought to the sticking point.
In the business world the effect of the purge is less clear. War and defeat and a long treatyless period have staggered Japan’s economy quite apart from the removal of the purgees. As indicated in the foregoing statistical résumé, the number of persons disqualified by the [Page 788] purge in its economic incidence has formed a relatively small part 01 the 210,000 total. The expressions of opposition and bitterness come not so much from the Japanese public as from former Japanese business leadership itself and from American and foreign business connections who very naturally would find their immediate interest best served by quick resuming of contact with the Japanese whom they knew and trusted before the war. The apathy of the Japanese public on this score would appear to arise from a very common recognition that the structure itself of the former Japanese economy required change because of its concentration of rewards upon a small class, if for no other reason. Here again doubt appears to attach not so much on account of detailed injustices incurred in the application of the economic purge as on account of apprehension that the creation of new leadership may prove inadequate. A new and irresponsible concentration of monied interest and economic control is rapidly ensconcing itself in Japan, and adequate regulatory measures to confine its activities to the common interest have not been devised.
[Here follows discussion of desirable modifications in the purge.]
Respectfully yours,
- Footnote in the original omitted.↩