Volume 46, Number 16 · October 21, 1999
MacArthur's Children
By Ian Buruma
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
by John W. Dower
Norton/The New Press, 676 pp., $29.95
What exactly did General Douglas MacArthur, the former Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, or SCAP, mean when he likened the Japanese nation to a twelve-year-old child? He made the notorious comparison on May 5, 1951, to a joint committee of the Senate, after being fired by President Truman for wanting to 'roll back' China from Korea (with nuclear bombs if required). He had left Japan some weeks before, where he received a hero's farewell: hundreds of thousands of weeping Japanese lined his route to the airport, the public radio station played 'Auld Lang Syne,' the Mainichi newspaper cried, 'Oh, General MacArthur—General, General, who saved Japan from confusion and starvation,' and the liberal Asahi paper gushed that
Review, 5825 words
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