Source: Philip E. Lilienthal and John H. Oakie, Asia's Captive Colonies (New. York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1943), and Elizabeth Allerton Clark, Peoples of the China Seas (Los Angeles: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1942).

Mr. GULICK. By Zaibatsu, you mean the fifteen wealthiest families that control the economic life of Japan.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. The Mitsui, the Mitsubishi, the Yasuda. . .

Mr. LATTIMORE. The whole crowd, and I would include the Emperor and the Imperial Clan with them, because the Imperial Clan, with its economic and financial holdings, is built into the whole structure.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Yes, of course, for they have stock in everything. There is a further point which I would like to get at for a minute. It seems to me that what we really should be trying to do in Japan at this moment is to get the idea

across to the Japanese masses that we come as liberators. They have been slaves of this old oligarchy and the hangover of the feudal order and the rest of it. The Japanese, whether he is a common soldier in the army or whether he is a farmer on his little plot, is a virtual slave. Now we should be coming in to say to them, "After we have wiped out this crowd who has been running things, we mean to give you a chance to have the kind of a government and the kind of a nation which you deserve."

Mr. LATTIMORE. I am thoroughly in favor of that, and I think that we may reasonably count on a certain element of cooperation in Japan.

Mr. GULICK. Of course, that will take a lot of reeducation of the people, will it not?

Mr. LATTIMORE. First, it will take a little bit of that good old "chaos" of which so many people are afraid. I cannot think of any country in the world in which a little period of chaos would be more healthy, because the respectable people in Japan and the decent people in Japan will not be able to get their heads up before they have had some chaos. I mean specifically the people who tried to vote against military aggression in the last election which they had.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. That was very significant-that final vote or election that they had before the military crowd simply ran away with things in Manchuria. Mr. LATTIMORE. You will find that that crowd will not be able to get in touch with the people in the State Department who stand for a Japanese equivalent of a Darlan policy, a Badoglio policy, and all that kind of thing.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Yes, it seems to me that if there is any one thing clear about that Far Eastern situation at the present time, it is that to attempt to work through a puppet system out there will simply produce in the long run a worse tragedy than we have had.

Mr. GULICK. Then you believe that we should not have the Emperor or an Imperial family of any kind on the throne or in any relationship to the government?

Mr. HUTCHINSON. I am not saying that. What I am saying is that, in the long run, that is something which has to be settled by the Japanese themselves, and I am saying that to attempt to use the Imperial family as puppets, as, for instance, the Japanese have attempted to use Wang Ching-wei as a puppet in China, will simply land us in unutterable confusion and a blind alley.

Mr. LATTIMORE. I agree with you there, and I am afraid that it is a very dangerous notion that a lot of Americans have that we could use the Emperor to do our job for us. It seems to me that the only way out of that is to put the Emperor and Imperial Clan, the whole gang of them, out of circulation the moment we get to Japan-simply sequester them, do not kill them or anythnig like that, but put them out of circulation.

Mr. GULICK. I will agree with you on that if, however, we use the Emperor in the first place to declare the war over, because he is the only man to be followed or obeyed by the military forces.

Mr. LATTIMORE. I am not so sure of that. I think that the Japanese can surrender without a top command to surrender, just as the Germans surrendered without a top command to surrender. When the time comes, they will surrender. Mr. HUTCHINSON. You mean that generals in the field will surrender? Mr. LATTIMORE. Generals in the field will surrender, or at least troops in the field will surrender. We have the beginnings of that already. Do not forget that, when we come to the home islands of Japan, we are dealing with bigger areas in terms of square miles. People are not going to be crowded into little caves where they can put up last stands. Thère is going to be room to run away, and when you get room to run away is when you get the time that people surrender.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. And you do not believe that we are going to need anything like this Flensburg business which we had in Germany?

Mr. LATTIMORE. Not unless we create in the Japanese mind the idea that we are fighting a race war, that all Japanese are yellow-bellied so-and-so's, and that Americans are not going to deal with them as human people. If you give them an idea that when they have surrendered, they will get a reasonable break, then they will surrender.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. I am glad to hear you say that, because your experience out there has been so extensive that it carries great weight, and that is what I have been trying to believe myself. It seems to me, then, that what we really should be trying to get across to the Japanese people as a whole these days is that surrender does not mean that they are going to have to exchange one despotism for another but that surrender will mean that, in place of the despotism which they have known, they are going to have a wholly new opportunity to build a democratic order of their own.

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CHICAGO ROUND

EASTERN ASIA

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TABLE PICTOGRAPH 1/3

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Mr. GULICK. I agree with you in that we ought to let them know beforehand that we are going to allow them to form the kind of government which they want. If they want the Emperor back, all right-after a number of years, of course.

Mr. LATTIMORE. But if they get the Emperor back, it should be done by a Japanese plebiscite in which they are allowed to vote for having the Emperor back or having a constitutional monarchy or a republic. If it is done in that way, then the Japanese Emperor would come back not as a divine ruler but as a ruler by permission of the people. However, I am perfectly convinced that, in the disillusionment following defeat, the Japanese will all turn to the common idea prevailing in the world today-that progressive government is government under republican forms by democratic methods and that very soon there will be a Japanese demand for doing away with the Emperor and that at that point we should not have a conservative American policy of preserving the Emperor. Mr. HUTCHINSON. Yes, exactly, and therefore our responsibility is simply to see that there is a period after surrender in which the Japanese democratic forces

get a chance to develop while we have the Emperor and his crowd, as you say, "on ice" somewhere. When the people have really had a chance, then let there be the plebiscite. Then the decision will be up to the Japanese, and let us let them go to it.

Mr. LATTIMORE. But there is an all-important point of timing there, and that is the one point on which I should criticize your Christian Century petition, Hutchinson, for it might mislead people as to timing, both in this country and in Japan. It would mislead them in the sense that they might think that if there were a little bargaining about the terms, it might end earlier. I am convinced that the more bargaining there is, the longer the Japanese will go on fighting, because they hope that they will be able to split the United Nations; and, therefore, we have to show an absolutely firm and unshakable front on the idea of military unconditional surrender.

Mr. GULICK. While we do not agree on the terms that should be stated, I believe that they should be specifically stated, however. Then there would not be the bargaining going on.

Mr. LATTIMORE. They have been, I think, specifically enough stated.

Mr. GULICK. By Truman's statement?

Mr. LATTIMORE. By Truman's statement that this is military unconditional surrender and that it does not mean the extermination of the Japanese people.