FOURTH-RATE NATION

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 64, 13 September 1945, Page 7

FOURTH-RATE NATION

STEPS TO SAFEGUARD ALLIED

INTERESTS

NEW YORK, September 12. General Mac Arthur intimated today (hat Japan will be reduced to a fourthrate nation. The complete defeat of the Japanese army had generally been overlooked in the reports of Japan's military disintegration, which had a tendency to stress the tremendous naval and air victories, he said in an interview in Yokohama.

"Japan will be unable to wage war again within the predictable future," said General Mac Arthur. "There are three preliminary steps necessary to safeguard the Allied interests: first, to transfer the Allied prisoners of war to safety; secondly, the dispersal of sufficient occupation troops to ensure the utmost security without endangering the lives of the troops, while at the same time being prepared for any outbreak of violence; and, thirdly, the complete disarmament and return to the homeland of all Japanese military personnel, regardless of rank." The question of the retention of Emperor Hirohito was dealt with in a manner to leave a distinct impression that General Mac Arthur was proceeding with full knowledge and understanding of the Japanese, says a correspondent at Yokohama. The general explained that the Emperor actually had two separate and distinct forms, as a temporal leader and a pastoral leader. He made it clear that the occupation forces will not tamper with religious faith, thus leaving the Emperor as the spiritual leader. On the other hand, possible changes in Hirohito's pastoral leadership are subject to future developments, in which there is hope that the Emperor himself will display democratic liberalism, but for the immediate present his position is a matter for speculation, in which General Mac Arthur refused to indulge.

RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY.

The general said he was gratified at the Japanese obedience, and contrasted it with the situation in Europe. Here our authority "is respected by everyone who has carried out the occupation orders, while in Europe the only leaders the people ever followed were of necessity placed in gaol," he said Elaborating this point, he added: "The Japanese will have an extremely hard time in maintaining life itself in the coming months, because they are eoing to be compelled to rehabilitate themselves, without hope of assistance. Whereas our civilian affairs officers in Germany have already been compelled to provide coal and are faced with the necessity of providing other necessities, the Japanese themselves, and not the American taxpayers, are going to pay the price of the war."

General Mac Arthur expressed the belief that the Japanese would be allowed to maintain sufficient heavy industry to rebuild the nation themselves, but this would be controlled to the extent that the war industries would be completely wiped out. The destruction in Tokio had convinced him that Japan had "not sufficient industry left in this area to build a musket."

Japan's rise to take the leadership in trade in the Orient could not be prevented; even if it were desirable, he said, but he made it clear that the confinement of Japan to the four mam islands will prevent the reconstrtution of the nation as a leading world Power. , ~ Never in history was an army dealt such a defeat as the Japanese, he said. It is admitted that they had men in great numbers, but their man-power was ineffective because the men were in small, unequipped groups, incapable of united action at the spots where they were badly needed. General Mac Arthur was completely unimpressed with the potentialities ot the Samurai and feudal system, and declared that the latter was doomed to deteriorate till it left the Japanese nobles holding honorary titles, as m Britain.