Based on Masayuki Takayama’s “Henken Jizai,” this essay harshly criticizes MacArthur’s years in the Philippines, his occupation rule over defeated Japan, manipulation of the Diet, the legalization of abortion, the handling of the Awa Maru incident, and the postwar intellectual discourse that praises the MacArthur Constitution.
It probes the postwar structure created by GHQ and the Asahi Shimbun and questions the true nature of Japan’s constitutional founding process.

2019-06-13
Professor Ikuko Toyonaga of Waseda University praised the MacArthur Constitution in the Asahi Shimbun the other day and wrote, “It was fortunate for Japan that the drafters included talented people from GHQ.”

The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s “Henken Jizai,” which appears at the end of this week’s issue of Shukan Shincho, released today.
Not only the Japanese people but people throughout the world will surely be astonished by his vast knowledge, discernment, and high reporting ability.
He is the one and only journalist in the postwar world, and a treasure of Japan.
Only 750,000 yen?
Douglas MacArthur was posted to Manila in the form of being employed by the puppet government that the United States had established in the Philippines.
His job was to create a Philippine national army of one hundred thousand elite troops, but its mission was to serve as a shield for American soldiers when the Japanese army attacked.
It was something like the Indian troops for the British army.
By the end of November 1941, around the time the final ultimatum to Japan, the Hull Note, was issued, preparations for the shield had somehow been completed, and tank units to reinforce it had also arrived from the American mainland.
Britain as well had constructed strong fortresses in Kowloon and the Malay Peninsula, had finished deploying Indian troops, and even the battleship Prince of Wales, just barely,
had entered Singapore on December 2.
Everything was proceeding according to plan.
And the attack on Pearl Harbor also went according to plan.
Then came MacArthur’s turn, and everything went wrong.
After being informed before dawn of the Japanese attack, he remained shut up in his room the whole time.
At his disposal were forty B-17 heavy bombers against which even the latest German fighter aircraft could do nothing.
Yet even when his subordinates urged him, “Let us strike the Japanese bases in Taiwan with them,” he simply panicked.
Before long, Japanese bombers attacked Clark Field and destroyed all 200 aircraft on the ground, including the B-17s and fighters.
By the time he heard of the Japanese landing at Lingayen Gulf, MacArthur had regained enough judgment to decide immediately to retreat to Corregidor Island and fled there.
When even that became dangerous, he said “I shall return” and decided on fleeing before the enemy, abandoning his soldiers.
Before fleeing, he summoned President Quezon of the puppet government and “demanded a reward of 500,000 dollars for having trained the national army, and had it transferred into his account at Chemical Bank in New York” (Michael Schaller, The Age of MacArthur).
Also, on the advice of Courtney Whitney, he bought up shares in Philippine mines before his escape and made a great fortune after the war.
Whitney would later become one of the men who drafted the MacArthur Constitution.
Such a man ruled over defeated Japan.
He first took thorough revenge on the Japanese army, which had made him lose face.
Tomoyuki Yamashita was subjected to the humiliation of hanging.
Next he said, “Hang thirty-nine war leaders.”
America has a mass execution precedent in the Mankato trial, where thirty-eight Sioux tribal chiefs were hanged at one time.
He intended to establish a record of thirty-nine, surpassing that.
He also attempted, just as in Cuba and the Philippines, to impose an American-made constitution.
While Whitney drafted the proposal, GHQ replaced the members of the Diet who were to deliberate on it.
They purged decent legislators, put forward candidates who would obey GHQ, and even decided who would win and lose.
Thirty-nine women including Shizue Kato, along with Communist Party members released from prison by GHQ, entered the House of Representatives, and through their efforts the MacArthur Constitution was enacted.
GHQ had the Socialist Party submit and enact a bill legalizing abortion in order to reduce Japan’s population.
That law also included a provision, supported by Shizue Kato, legalizing the forced sterilization of the intellectually disabled, something that had competed with Hitler before the war.
The Asahi Shimbun supported that as well.
MacArthur forced one more outrageous demand upon the Diet, which did whatever he wished.
At the very end of the war there had been the Awa Maru incident, in which an American submarine torpedoed the Awa Maru, a Green Cross ship guaranteed safe passage, and 2,000 people were killed.
The only survivor was a steward, Kantaro Shimoda.
The American side admitted fault, but MacArthur, who intended to run in the U.S. presidential election, made the Japanese side withdraw its compensation demands and, in addition, demanded that Japan bear all costs of the stationed U.S. forces.
He had this accepted through Diet deliberations.
MacArthur summoned Kantaro Shimoda, who had been confined on Tinian, to the Dai-Ichi Life Building and gave him 750,000 yen as hush money.
This was the only money MacArthur ever paid in Japan, before or after.
Professor Ikuko Toyonaga of Waseda University praised the MacArthur Constitution in the Asahi Shimbun the other day and wrote, “It was fortunate for Japan that the drafters included talented people from GHQ.”
I wonder whether she meant MacArthur and Whitney.
So this is the kind of person teaching at Waseda.