A bilingual presentation of General MacArthur’s congressional testimony on strategy against Japan during World War II.
The text highlights Japan’s resource shortages, security motivations, and the strategic context of the Pacific War.
It also reflects on broader historical lessons and the recurring patterns of geopolitical decision-making.

The following is an article I discovered on the internet earlier.
Bilingual Text: MacArthur Testimony.
2018-01-08.
The following is an article I found on the internet earlier.
http://www.chukai.ne.jp/~masago/macar.html.
Bilingual text: MacArthur testimony.
Strategy Against Japan in World War II.
Senator Hickenlooper.
Question No. 5: Isn’t your proposal for sea and air blockade of Red China the same strategy by which Americans achieved victory over the Japanese in the Pacific?
General MacArthur.
Yes, sir.
In the Pacific we bypassed them.
We closed in.
You must understand that Japan had an enormous population of nearly 80 million people crowded into four islands.
About half were a farming population and the other half engaged in industry.
Potentially the labor pool in Japan, both in quantity and quality, was as good as any I have ever known.
Somewhere along the line they discovered what you might call the dignity of labor, that men are happier when they are working and constructing than when they are idle.
This enormous capacity for work meant that they had to have something to work on.
They built factories and had the labor but did not possess the basic materials.
There is practically nothing indigenous to Japan except the silkworm.
They lacked cotton, wool, petroleum products, tin, rubber, and many other resources, all of which existed in the Asiatic basin.
They feared that if those supplies were cut off, there would be ten to twelve million people unemployed in Japan.
Their purpose, therefore, in going to war was largely dictated by security.
The above MacArthur testimony is part of a question-and-answer session held on May 3, 1951, before the U.S. Senate Joint Committee on Armed Services and Foreign Relations.
Reference.
Tokyo Trial: Japan’s Defense, by Keiichiro Kobori, Kodansha Academic Library.
The Japanese translation above was produced by referring to the translation in the above source and translating independently.
Incidentally, on the same day, May 3, MacArthur also testified that “the greatest political mistake the United States has made in the Pacific in the past hundred years was to allow communists to become powerful in China.”
History is said to repeat itself.
It was also the United States that fostered President Hussein in Iraq and bin Laden in Afghanistan.
The United States may be strong in strategy and tactics but weak in grand political strategy.