THE RISING EAST
Challenges in Iraq unlike those in postwar Japan
By Richard Halloran
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld likes to point to the American occupation of Japan after World War II to assert that America is moving faster to rebuild and reform Iraq than the Americans did in seven years of remaking Japan, starting in 1945. Therefore, he says, Americans and critics elsewhere should be patient.
Associated Press
He may be right in asserting that a comparison of the occupation of Japan with that of Iraq could be illuminating. Perhaps inadvertently, however, he only underscores the extraordinary difficulties of bringing peace and reconstruction to Iraq.
U.S. forces in Iraq have struggled with insurgents and a population divided along ethnic and religious lines. In contrast, at the end of World War II, Japanese Emperor Hirohito told his people, a unified island nation, to lay down their arms — and most obeyed, bringing an end to fighting as U.S. troops arrived.
In Japan, the most important element in the American success was the late Emperor Hirohito, who shaped the Japanese attitude toward the occupation. On Aug. 15, 1945, he decreed that Japan would surrender and called upon Japanese to "bear the unbearable and endure the unendurable" during the first foreign invasion of their homeland.
In less poetic terms, the emperor, known posthumously as the Showa emperor, proclaimed on Sept. 2, 1945: "We command all our people forthwith to cease hostilities, to lay down their arms and faithfully to carry out all the provisions of the instrument of surrender."
Consequently, no insurgency greeted American troops when they came ashore. Japan's militarists had planned an all-out resistance, even arming old men with bamboo spears and women with carpenter's awls and training them to stab the invading soldiers.
In turn, the Americans landed in combat formations with rifles loaded. Within a few days, however, calm prevailed because the emperor said so.
While there may have been minor skirmishes between recalcitrant Japanese and the American conquerors, the fighting was truly over on Aug. 15.
In contrast, Saddam Hussein, who held far more power than the emperor, never formally surrendered or told the Iraqis to lay down their arms. To the contrary, he urged his loyalists to take to the alleys and scrub brush to ambush the Americans and their allies.
Moreover, Saddam fled from Baghdad and hid in rat holes around his hometown in Tikrit. When he was finally flushed out, his first words were: "I am ready to negotiate." His capture has not produced a noticeable letup in anti-American terrorist tactics.
In another major difference, Japan is a tight, unified island nation. Iraq, by contrast, is split into at least three ethnic communities, the Sunni Muslims who supported Saddam, the Shiite Muslims whom he oppressed, and the non-Arab Kurds in the north who have cousins in Turkey and Iran.
Among the Americans, no one in Iraq has the stature of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who commanded the respect of the Japanese by running the occupation as if he were the shogun of yore.
In comparison, the American high command in Iraq is split between Ambassador Paul Bremer and Gen. John Abizaid, both competent but neither with the pre-eminence of MacArthur.
The Americans, moreover, knew much about Japan long before the war was over. A corps of intelligence officers had learned the Japanese language, second-generation Japanese Americans who spoke Japanese served in the Military Intelligence Service, and a small cadre of scholars informed policy-makers.
In contrast, U.S. forces in Iraq have had to scramble to find Americans who speak Arabic or to rely on English-speaking Iraqis of questionable allegiance and competence. The Central Intelligence Agency had to resort to advertising for people who can read and speak Arabic.
Long before Japan's surrender, the United States and its allies had begun planning for the occupation. It took 13 days in August for the first Americans to get there because the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had caused the surrender to come faster than expected. After that, the Americans were ready to work through the existing Japanese bureaucracy and police force.
In Iraq, the American occupation has all the markings of having been hastily assembled, having only the most rudimentary plan, and having to decide policies as they go along. No one anticipated the looting of ministries and museums and only now is the semblance of a police force taking shape.
Lastly, Japan had dabbled in democracy in the 1920s, before the militarists took over, and had a nucleus of democratically minded political leaders. Foremost among them was Shigeru Yoshida, Japan's ambassador to Britain before the war and an admirer of British parliamentary democracy. He was arrested before the end of the war but emerged from prison to be prime minister five times.
Yoshida was the towering figure in the revival of Japan. No Yoshida has yet appeared in Iraq.
Richard Halloran is a former New York Times correspondent in Asia.
