Douglas MacArthur

In 2012, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) released a draft of a new Japanese constitution. This is astonishing, because it intends to destroy all three principles of current constitution, or to renounce the modern constitutionalism. Despite the most important function of the constitution being the restriction of governmental power, the LDP/government is eager to abolish it, so the human rights of Japanese people are being threatened. We Japanese should rediscover the significance and roots of the current constitution.
    It is generally believed that the current Constitution of Japan is simply based on a draft by GHQ/SCAP or General Douglas MacArthur. However, this recognition is not accurate. This paper, opposing such views, focuses on two stream of thinking, to which certain Japanese thinkers and politicians have been involved in: (1) One is Kempo Kenkyukai, including Iwasaburo Takano, Tatsuo Morito, and Yasuzo Suzuki, whose draft was conversely a basis of GHQ’s draft. In particular, Suzuki was one of the successors of the tradition of Japanese liberals led by Emori Ueki or Sakuzo Yoshino since the Meiji/Taisho era. (2) The other is the pacifism of Kijuro Shidehara, who originated the Article 9 which renounces war. They say it was just “imposed” by MacArthur, but this is not true, according to testimonies by Shidehara’s secretaries and friends. In reality, Shidehara himself asked MacArthur to “impose” it on Japanese government in order to save the Tenno system, and it is not just an ideal but a radical solution to the prisoner’s dilemma of armaments race.
    These facts allow the recognition that the Japanese constitution is not simply “made in America,” because it was, at least partially, derived from the tradition of Japanese liberal thought. We should develop this tradition and re-achieve true modernization, so that the fundamental freedoms and human dignity of individuals are fully respected.

This analysis focuses on Douglas MacArthur's Farewell Speech in terms of MacArthur's rhetorical positioning as a frontier hero. By reading the speech through the lens of the Frontier Myth, a better understanding of the conflict represented in the speech can be gained. I argue that the frontier in the speech is rhetorically converted from material spaces into an ideological frontier, where MacArthur's position as frontier hero undermines the Cold War policy of containment.

In 1894 Japan went to war with Russia over the latter’s expansion into East Asia. However, in February 1904 Japan attacked Russian forces at Port Arthur and Inchon. Japan at that time was an ally of Britain, and the US was willing to allow Japan to have control over Korea in exchange for Japan acknowledging US control over the Philippines. In 1905 Japan established a protectorate over Korea, and in 1910 Japan annexed Korea.
    In August 1945 the USSR declared war on Japan and entered the northeastern section of Korea that borders on the Soviet Union. US troops didn’t arrive in Korea until September 8th. Two young State Department officers were assigned to define the American zone of occupation. They decided that an “administrative” line be established along 38th parallel. Korean Communists immediately began forming so-called People’s Committees friendly to the Soviet Union in preparation for Korean independence.
    In December 1945 the foreign ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union met in Moscow to discuss post-war issues in Europe and the Far East. It was agreed that the U.S. and Soviet military commands in Korea would establish a Joint Commission to make recommendations for a single, free government in Korea. The Americans favored a united Korean government under Syngman Rhee. Rhee opposed the U.S.-Soviet Cooperation Committee that was created and refused to negotiate with the Communists. In September the US decided to refer the matter to the UN General Assembly. In November the UN General Assembly established a UN Temporary Commission on Korea to oversee elections scheduled for May 1948. The Communists did not participate in the election, newly elected National Assembly elected Rhee as president in July, 1948. In February 1946 a provisional government named the Provisional People’s Committee was formed under Kim Il-sung.
    On New Year’s Day 1949 Moscow announced that it would withdrew all Soviet troops from North Korea, and in June the last American troops left Pusan. In a speech on January 1950 at the National Press Club, Secretary of State Dean Acheson implied that both South Korea and Taiwan were outside the American “defensive perimeter.” In April Kim Il-sung visited Stalin in Moscow and asked his support for a forcible reunification of Korea. Stalin gave his support, but warned that North Korea should not expect Soviet military support for the invasion. In June the North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea. Truman then ordered American air and naval forces to support South Korea.
    By the end of June the North Koreans had taken control of the South Korean capital of Seoul. In an emergency meeting the Security Council passed a resolution calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities. The Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council, because earlier in the year the Security Council had refused to replace Nationalist China with the Communist China in the United Nations. Truman appointed the hero of the War in the Pacific and former military governor of Japan, Douglas MacArthur as Commander of the United Nations Forces. American ground troops were quickly redeployed from Japan to South Korea to assist the Army of the Republic of Korea resist the North Korean People’s Army. But outnumbered three to one, they were forced to retreat to the port of Pusan. MacArthur came up with a plan to launch an amphibious assault on the rear of North Korean forces at the port of Inchon on the western coast of the Korean peninsula.
    The Communist Chinese Foreign Minister Chou En-lai broadcast a warning that Peking would not tolerate a crossing of the 38th parallel. In early October the Eighth Army crossed the 38th parallel near Kaeson. But a South Korean force approaching the Yalu River was almost wiped out by Chinese troops. MacArthur then requested permission under the international law rule of “hot pursuit” to chase attacking aircraft for three minutes across the Manchurian border. MacArthur also requested additional forces, including Chinese Nationalists from Formosa, a naval blockade of China, and permission to bomb the Chinese mainland. Truman ordered all commands and embassies abroad not to make any speeches or issue press releases until they were cleared by the departments of State or Defense.
    In March MacArthur decided to defy the President’s gag order by calling a press conference in which he predicted if he did not receive major additions to his army, there would be a military stalemate followed by a “savage slaughter” by the enemy. This was interpreted as an attempt to torpedo a diplomatic initiative made by the United States to negotiate a truce of which he had been privately informed. After a series of meetings with his advisors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Truman decided to relieve MacArthur of his command.
    The reaction to the dismissal of MacArthur was intense. Truman’s popularity was at an all-time low, and he decided not to run for re-election in the 1952 Presidential election. The Republican nominated former general Dwight David Eisenhower, and the Democrats Adelai Stevenson. Eisenhower chose as his running mate was Richard Nixon. In a speech on October 24, 1952, Eisenhower promised to end the war, and go to Korea if he were elected. After winning the election in November, but before his inauguration as President in January, Eisenhower went to Korea in December 1952. Two weeks after his inauguration, Eisenhower in February 1953 announced that he was withdrawing the Seventh Fleet from protecting China from a possible invasion from Taiwan. Then in March Josef Stalin died after a brief illness. He was replaced by a troika. On 15 March the Kremlin moved dramatically away from the style of Soviet foreign policy of Stalin’s last years. Soon after, the Chinese Foreign Minister Chou En-lai sent a cablegram proposing the resumption of negotiations at Panmunjom.
      It is informative to contrast the outcome of the Vietnam Conflict, after which the United States permitted the country to be reunited under the Communist regime in the North, to the outcome of the Korean Police Action, in which the country remained divided between the Communist North and the non-Communist South. With assistance from the Soviet Union, China tested its first nuclear weapon in 1964, and its first hydrogen bomb in 1967. In 1964 North Korea asked the Soviet Union for assistance in its nuclear program, but the Soviet Union refused.  Instead, Kim Il-sung approached Pakistan for help. Pakistan began its nuclear program in response to India’s nuclear program. India tested its first nuclear device in 1974, using a reactor it obtained from Canada under the so-called “Atoms for Peace” program of the Eisenhower administration. It is alleged that Pakistan obtained technical advice from China. Kim Il-sung died in 1994, and he was succeeded by his son Kim Jong-Il, who is more autocratic and erratic than his father. In May 1998 North Korea tested five nuclear devices. Thus, one of the legacies of the Cold War was the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
    In conclusion, the Korean police action demonstrates the transition from an American foreign policy based on the principle of self-determination under Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the anti-Communist ideology of the Cold War under Harry Truman. This was done under pressure of lobbyists and politicians who accused those who disagreed with them of treason. For the next 40 years (from 1950 to 1990) United States foreign policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations has been premised on the containment of the spread of Communism, not only in Asia, but Europe, Africa, and South America. This fight against an ideology and the support for those regimes, however, corrupt or dictatorial, that oppose Communism has pre-empted one of the principles on which this nation was founded—that is, self-determination. It is sad that rather from learning from this history, our foreign policy is again putting a fight against the ideology of Islamism before the underlying reasons why certain people are attracted to radicalism, namely, that they have not been allowed to change a status quo under which they have been divided and forced to live in countries not of their own making.

Throughout most of our history, the American Empire has paid lip service to the principle of self-determination and its opposition to colonialism, but in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the United States did acquire overseas “territories.” Technically, these were not colonies. The legal definition of a colony is a political community of citizens from one country who emigrate elsewhere to establish a political community subject to the mother country. In the past this has been done by  a charter of incorporation either by a monarch or a national government. This was the case in the original 13 British colonies in North American that became the United States and the Philippines under Spanish rule.

Alaska and Hawaii were both “incorporated” territories before they became states in 1959. American Samoa, Guam, the American Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands and several uninhabited islands and atolls in the Pacific remain “unincorporated” territories to the present day. The residents of four of these unincorporated territories (Guam, the American Virgin Island, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands) are considered U.S. citizens and they each have one non-voting representative in Congress, but their residents cannot vote for president of vice-president. The people of the American Samoa are considered “non-citizen U.S. nationals,” which means that they must be nationalized to become citizens of the United States. The difference between an “incorporated” and an “unincorporated” territory is that rights in the Constitution apply fully in incorporated territories, but only partially in non-incorporated territories (See, The South Pacific).

Under American occupation after the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Philippines were initially a “military government” that became a “territory” in 1901 under the supervision of the War Department’s Bureau of Insular Affairs. In 1935 the Philippines became a “commonwealth” under which the President of the United States had the power to certify a new constitution for eventual independence and certain powers of approval over currency, imports, exports, and immigration laws. The Philippines obtained complete independence on July 4, 1946.

Despite the fact that from the beginning of the United States’ occupation of the Philippines, it promised eventual independence once it was determined that the Filipinos could govern themselves, the United States did not address the two issues that created instability after independence: the so-called Muslim Moro wars in the southern Philippines dating back to the Spanish colony and the economic inequality between the average Filipino and the ruling Filipino families. (The Muslim revolt will be addressed in a later essay.)

During the Cold War, the United States continued to intervene covertly by the CIA in Philippine elections to support anti-Communist presidents from one or another wealthy family. This resulted in the formation of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing the National People’s Army (NPA). The United States overlooked the corruption of Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda, because Marcos was anti-communist. When the rival Aquino family came to power with the presidency of Corazon Aquino followed by his son Ninoy Aquino, neither effectively addressed either the Muslim or Communist insurgencies. The current president, Rodrigo Duterte, came from the islands of Visayas and Mindanao, not from the ruling Ilano families of Luzon, but his administration has been autocratic and pro-Chinese. Yet the Communist and Muslim insurgencies continue. The United States failed to prepare the Philippines to addressing either problem. If anything, it has confused these issues by invoking first an anti-Communist crusade and then the War on Terrorism.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki 69 Years Later
Author: Fareed Khan
Date: August 11, 2014

http://theviewfromhere-fareedkhan.blogspot.ca/2014/08/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-69-years-later.html

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, World War II, Atomic Weapons, Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Deaths, Nuclear Nations, Manhattan Project, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Albert Einstein

A legal radio drama about the United States investigation into the Japanese Unit 731 human experimentation unit, eventual contract negotiations and its lasting ramifications throughout the Cold War and today. The legal research piece is told in dramatic form from the perspective of the American biologist and med-school professor entrusted with leading the investigation, and his struggle to balance his duty to his country against the Hippocratic Oath.

Материалы Междунар.  науч.  конф.  « Пространства коммуникации:  язык,  литература,  медиа»,  посвященной столетию Иркутского государственного университета .  Иркутск , 18–21  сент. 2018  г. /  ФГБОУ ВО «ИГУ»; [отв.  ред.  Е.  Ф.  Серебренникова]

Debido a la fragmentación lingüística, la literatura filipina en español, que había tenido el papel de diseñar el devenir de la nación, fue segregada y olvidada en bibliotecas y tiendas de antigüedades. De ser patrimonio nacional, la literatura filipina en español acabó constituyendo “recuerdos de familia”. Usando como ejemplo la vida y poesía en español de Zoilo Hilario (1892-1963), el presente artículo trata de realizar una crónica de Filipinas en el siglo XX atendiendo al valor estético y político del Modernismo filipino y al conflicto generacional que la intervención norteamericana produjo en el archipiélago. Desde el cenáculo literario «El Jardín de Epicuro» a la trágica muerte de Efraín Hilario, la poesía de Zoilo expone la irredención de una sociedad forzada a vitorear la vuelta de MacArthur.