Book Says MacArthur Flooded Japan With Post-War Religion

By Suzanne McGee
c. 2011 Religion News Service

(RNS/ENInews) A new book on post-war Japan says Gen. Douglas MacArthur sought to fill the country's "spiritual vacuum" with religious and quasi-religious beliefs, from Christianity to Freemasonry, as an antidote to communism.

In "1945 Under the Shadow of the Occupation: The Ashlar and The Cross," Japanese investigative journalist Eiichiro Tokumoto documents MacArthur's efforts to persuade missionaries to intensify their efforts, even encouraging mass conversions to Catholicism.

"There was a complete collapse of faith in Japan in 1945 -- in our invincible military, in the emperor, in the religion that had become known as 'state Shinto,"' Tokumoto writes.

A number of documents Tokumoto used for research were declassified only recently, including accounts of a 1946 meeting between MacArthur and two U.S. Catholic bishops.

"General MacArthur asked us to urge the sending of thousands of Catholic missionaries -- at once," Bishops John F. O'Hara and Michael J. Ready later reported to the Vatican. MacArthur told them that they had a year to help fill the "spiritual vacuum" created by the defeat.

Based on his experience in the Philippines, MacArthur believed the Catholic Church could find particular appeal because the tradition of seeking absolution for one's mistakes or misdeeds "appeals to the Oriental," they reported.

In the wake of the missionaries' efforts, the Bible became a best-seller in Japan, while the number of Catholics climbed about 19 percent between 1948 and 1950, Tokumoto said.

The missionaries' success, however, was short-lived. Relatively few of the 2,000 or so who flooded into Japan could speak Japanese, and the 1960s saw a student backlash against perceived "elite" Christians who ran several major universities.

Comments

[Macready]

10:05 AM on 06/08/2011

I don't know if MacArthur flooded Japan with religion but I do know that he made it possible for other religions . . . particularly other Buddhist sects to come out . . . they had previously been in the shadow of Shintoism . . so what he did was definitely good. He opened up religious freedom in Japan.

[SaulBloodworth]

02:44 PM on 06/06/2011

The United States did not only destroy Christian churches in Japan, but also in Germany, mainly in Dresden, Hamburg and Cologne. That is why most Germans until today believe that Americans are not really Christians, they are just putting on an act.

By the way, after the war, the U.S. forbade to show pictures of Japanese civilians who were killed by the bomb, and who were wearing crosses, such as nuns.

[JimKoolAid]

05:43 PM on 06/18/2011

Dear Mr. Bloodworth,

Please do more professional research concerning WWII.

You're argument that "The United States did not only destroy..." is absolutely Bull Shit. Have you ever heard of an author named Kurt Vonnegut Jr. who was a US soldier POW in Dresden, Germany in 1944?
His novel, "Slaughterhouse Five", describes the "German Paris", Dresden, was bombed using sulfur-phosphorus bombs that eats through steel like jello.

American Air Force Generals were AGAINST the bombing. In reality it was the BRITISH RAF who partitioned the bombing in revenge for the bombings in London (Caps in emphasis to make it easy to read). Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were slaughtered to teach the Germans to never again bomb London. The war was already over in Germany. Only seven survivors were discovered by the Russians who "conquered" the city after the bombing. Vonnegut Jr. was one of them.

As for Japan's involvement in China raping and annihilating children and women with (Please read on the Rape of Nangking) and Hirohito's brainwashed society in believing he was a demi-god is not mentioned by you or most posters here.

And to you're last comment about the U.S. forbidding showing the photos of the civilian casualties "nuns" and that Germans believe Americans "not really Christians" is absolutely false. America's foreign policy over the last thirty years has been to protect Western Europe at the expense of the Non-"Christian" Americans.

Please read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"

[MIIKE]

11:08 PM on 07/04/2011

It's true that the Japanese did kill around 5 million people in WWII, most of them Chinese. Interestingly, the Chinese had killed more of their own people BEFORE WWII than any other nation had ever done to their own populace. During WWII, the Chinese Imperialists killed around 8 million of their own people. And when the Chinese Communists took over, they ended up killing around 50 million of their own. I should add that my father was a photographer working for Patton, and was one of the first that entered a concentration camp (I grew up with the horrific photos he took, which are now in a museum). At that time, the American soldiers were told not to rape any German women (you would think this would be a no-brainer). My father made it clear (sadly) that our men in uniform did indeed rape, on a massive scale, and that many would then slit the throats of their victims afterwards.
The moral: war is vile and disgusting, and there are no winners.
Of course, governments always try to brainwash their citizens. Right now in the U.S. we are bombing foreign civilians and torturing many innocent men and women. Our rationale: "for their freedom" or "collateral damage". I think it's quite insane of us to throw sticks at the atrocities of others while we are perpetrating them right now.

[Erewhon7]

01:15 PM on 06/06/2011

The end result: because of American occupation Japan became a democracy and industrial and hi-tech world power.

Dom Arigato, MacArthur-san.

[Macready]

10:06 AM on 06/08/2011

yup, MacArthur did a lot of good for Japan . . .

[sparkobuzzer]

12:24 PM on 06/06/2011

How many people know on here that the man who led the attack on Pearl Harbor , after the war became a Christian? around 1950 as he read a book by one of the men that was part of Doolittle raiders that was caught and was imprisoned during the war. And he became a Christian in one of the Japanese prision camps and so wrote a book on it. the Japanese man was M. Fuchida. He would later on some time would be speaking at one of the Billy Graham events. Said he could not go back in time to undo what he did. I will see him one day in heaven and i have lots of questions for him.

[boomer7391]

09:06 PM on 06/06/2011

I'm sure he'll be busy talking to Oppenheimer and won't have time for you.

[want2run527]

06:59 PM on 06/05/2011

Does religion count if it comes at the business end of a gun?

[stroyc]

05:16 AM on 06/06/2011

Look at Christianity. The only way the Hebrew myths have been perpetuated as truth is through murder and threat of death. Using any sense of the word "count", one must assume Christians the world over feel their religion "counts", despite the fact that belief is more or less enforced "at the business end of a gun." Clearly modern Christianity doesn't literally use violence (unless, of couse, you mistakenly qualify the U.S. as a "Christian Nation") to enforce it's dogma. However, at the core of the belief there is the threat of eternal suffering if you do not believe. Shouldn't that alone invalidate the religion? When one takes a broader look at religion as a worldwide phenomena one would have to have blinders on to not notice the rampant use of force to "encourage" the skeptical into submission. So it would seem that, yes, to those that are given to dogmatic beliefs, religion does count, regardless if "God" comes in the form of bullets or blades.

[want2run527]

07:58 AM on 06/06/2011

Excellent. Fanned.

[AZLibDem]

09:33 AM on 06/06/2011

They also use sham methods, like faith-healers and worse. An article by Francois Gautier in 2001 highlights the type of activity the Indian government is trying to stop:

"It is common in Kerala, for instance, particularly in the poor coastal districts, to have "miracle boxes" put in local churches. The innocent villager writes out a paper mentioning his wish: A fishing boat, a loan for a house, fee for child's schooling... And lo, a few weeks later, the miracle happens! And, of course, the whole family converts, making others in the village follow suit! Missionaries also make extensive use of "miracle" prayer meeting trick, where a glib preacher persuades naive tribals that a miracle is happening in their midst, while encouraging them to convert."

[Mum]

04:35 PM on 06/05/2011

For a fascinating and sobering look at an earlier attempt to convert or religiously colonize the Japanese read Shusaku Endos fictional account Silence.

[ShinjiIkari]

11:54 AM on 06/05/2011

There are other reasons Christianity didn't take root in Japan.

1. While the Japanese people lost trust in "state Shinto," Shinto itself continued to define Japan as a nation and as part of the cosmos. Since the war, Shinto traditions continue to permeate Japanese society. You can find a Shinto "god-shelf" in the apartments of otherwise materialistic, prosaic college students.

2. Christianity has been in Japan since Francis Xavier landed in 1549. As a Portuguese Jesuit, he got along with the shogun because they shared a top-down view of power on earth and in heaven. When Spanish Franciscans, devoted to empowering the poor, started arriving, they brought the old quarrels with them. Consequently, Catholic factions spent more time sniping at each other than spreading the Gospel--and it got worse when Protestant missionaries arrived. Consequently, Hideyoshi Toyotomi declared Christianity as hostile to the national sense of order, and 26 martyrs were crucified; the next shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, closed the borders to Christians, and the outside world in general, for over two centuries.

3. Ground Zero for the Nagasaki bomb included the Urakami Cathedral and the Convent of St. Frances. I think Japanese after the war had the thought: "If America can do that to their own (i.e., Christians), what'll happen to us?" The Occupation actively suppressed Shinto, but didn't have much luck inculcating Christianity, since the Japanese combination of Buddhism, Shinto and Confucian philosophy have been Japan's spiritual foundation for centuries. It fulfilled all needs.

[RedDogBear]

12:38 PM on 06/05/2011

Regarding issue 3: I think the use of the A bomb on civilian targets is a complex issue. But I don't see the fact that the targets contained churches to be such a major issue. Any large city would have. And do you believe that in all the bombing of China and other civilian targets that the Japanese went out of their way to avoid churches?

[ShinjiIkari]

01:31 AM on 06/06/2011

Nagasaki was, for centuries, the center of Japanese Christianity, as the only port open to western traders. There are more churches on the southernmost island of Kyuushu than on the other islands. Urakami Cathedral was the largest Catholic church in Asia. I think Japanese Christians assumed that westerners (assumed to all be Christians) would know this.

The "real" ground zero in Nagasaki was probably supposed to be the shipyards, but the wind moved the bomb several hundred yards before it went off, near the church.

[RedDogBear]

12:38 PM on 06/05/2011

Regarding use of the bomb, its clear in hindsight that the Japanese were very close to surrender, especially as they feared the entry of Russia against them. But hindsight is always 20-20. The American casualties in the battle of Okinawa were horrifying given tactics such as the kamikazi and the willingness of the japanese to fight to the death in entrenched positions. At the time it was the honest assesment of the US military that the only way to end the war was to invade Japan itself which would have resulted in orders of magnitude more casualties then Okinawa. Given that its understandable why Truman made the decision he did. Also, from the moral perspective it was the Japanese who first initiated terror bombing of civilian targets. Its unfortunate that the Americans not only chose the same tactic but became so much better at it.

[Mum]

04:37 PM on 06/05/2011

Of course there is the theory that the United States just needed someplace to truly test the bomb.

[Red Leaves]

11:10 AM on 06/05/2011

Well, whatever MacArthur's influence, it is clear it didn't really take. The vast majority of Japanese practice Buddhism and Shintoism, and most monotheistic religions remain a very small minority within Japan. Thank the Kami for that.

[LouGots]

09:05 AM on 06/05/2011

Gee, do youi think maybe state Shintoism and Emperor-worship were bad for the Japanese people and had just gotten them in a lot of trouble?

Our forbearance towards the Japanese stands out in world history as the exemplar of mercy and wisdom. Had they been conquered by a people such as they, themselves had been, their language trully would have been later spoken only in Hell.

[AZLibDem]

11:24 AM on 06/05/2011

"Gee, do youi think maybe state Shintoism and Emperor-wo­rship were bad for the Japanese people and had just gotten them in a lot of trouble?"

So what was Germany and Italy's excuse?

[RedDogBear]

11:34 AM on 06/05/2011

They get a pass and can still go to heaven, they were white people.

[negogato]

08:42 AM on 06/05/2011

I have a friend who was born in Heroshima a few years after the Atomic Bomb. She tells me and history confirms that the two largest centers of Christianity in Japan were Heroshima and Nagasaki. The largest Church in all of asia was destroyed in that bombing.

[spike91nz]

08:07 AM on 06/05/2011

Religion is thought control offered in exchange for promises to be delivered after you are dead. Clever but devious and it has been used to control citizens for a very long time. Perhaps that is the very inception of religion. When it moved from spirituality of the experience of life and wonder of being to the authoritarian interpretation of that experience in service of the status quo, it became a tool for managing people with their beliefs and making them passively compliant.

MacArthur was using the old tools he had handy for keeping people subserviant to authroity.

[Howard53545]

07:56 AM on 06/05/2011

Religious nuts are easy to control, they blame their oppressed status on the devil, and we can take their money.

[sparkobuzzer]

12:20 PM on 06/06/2011

Hmm, so i am easy to control? Being that i believe in the Lord Jesus is God Almighty. Hmm and blame opressed status. What oppressed status here in the US? Not like over in China.

And the first time i saw a lady with a demon, i said after a while , im outa here. Saw it in Anaheim, Calif. 1987 at a big church meeting. She was on the floor at the end of the service on her knees and growling up at a people around her and snarling like a wolf. i got on a chair and saw this.

[TBA]

06:49 AM on 06/05/2011

The introduction of the Catholic religion to Japan and Southern Asian basically became another feeding ground for Catholic Church and their Preist to molest more childern.

[ShinjiIkari]

12:03 PM on 06/05/2011

I don't know about that; some Japanese Buddhist priests didn't hesitate to have young male acolytes as lovers if women were unavailable. Japan has long had a history of sexual frankness that wasn't suppressed by puritanical Protestantism.

[stscotty]

06:03 AM on 06/05/2011

What I understand about McArthur is he is not one of American greatest general. My grandfather told how he left the female nurses to the Japanese. When FDR sent submarines over before Philippines fell. I bet the Marines who was in Korea in 1950 wouldnt have anything good to say about that man. Look at his history in the militiary and will show self center idiot.

[eddy joe]

05:28 AM on 06/05/2011

I think that people that do believe in a God, believe that there is one God. The difference of opinion is usually how to appease, do the will of, or win approval from that God.

[mrkurtzhedead]

06:59 AM on 06/05/2011

The Holy Trinity? Mary? Hinduism? Animism?

[gunnerfan5]

07:10 AM on 06/05/2011

"I think that people that do believe in a God, believe that there is one God"

Isn't that just a piece of tautology? If you belive in a God then that is the same thing as believing in one God.

[LouGots]

08:58 AM on 06/05/2011

That is incorrect as a matter of logic. That I believe in a Ford car does not negate my believe in Chevrolet cars. The misunderstanding arises from the equivocation in the word "one," which may mean either "one among many," or "one and only."