Macneils of Tokyo by Jack Seward

Author:Jack Seward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Chapter 18

Tokyo, Japan

October 1944

Douglas MacArthur kept his promise to the people of the Philippines. At the head of his army, he had waded through the surf of a Leyte beach and returned to the Philippines to drive out the Japanese. In his grandiose rhetoric, the commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific called on the Filipinos to rise and throw off the yoke of the invaders from the north.

Japanese rhetoric—at least, what the government announced for the ears of the public—did not suffer from comparison with that of Douglas MacArthur. If anything, MacArthur’s pronouncements were not quite as vainglorious as those of his enemy. Japanese communiques made extensive use of pompous self-glorification. Their airmen became “wild eagles,” and when it had to be admitted one of them was shot down by the foe, his aircraft was reported as being “self-destroyed,” with the clear implication that the pilot—the “wild eagle”—had deliberately crashed into the deck of an American warship. The Imperial Navy was always called the “invincible navy.” Those killed in combat became “hero-gods” to be forever honored in the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. The people themselves constituted the “rear front” or the “Hundred Million,” although the population of the country was only 74,000,000—and fast declining. Many did not swallow this nonsense, but who had the courage to call the hand of the military propagandists?

Helma Graf knew the dismal truth because she read the transcripts of American shortwave broadcasts, as monitored by Kyodo, and she was saddened. Not because Japan was being soundly defeated, but because the war was still going on at all, because men on both sides were still dying by the tens of thousands. The more she prayed for peace and universal love, the more the hatreds seemed to deepen, the more desperate the fighting grew.

Life in the Macneil mansion in Azabu continued on a descending level of comfort. With so much privation and hunger around them, there was little time for the residents to enjoy the marvelous October weather.

Shipton Macneil had turned eighteen the previous month, precipitating a crisis of decision. He had to decide whether to continue to be an American, as he had always regarded himself, or to take Japanese citizenship. If he opted to retain his American identity—and his treasured passport, he became an adult enemy alien, whereas until now, he had been merely a minor enemy alien, regarded as relatively harmless by the authorities.

As an adult enemy alien, however, Shipton would be reclassified and interned elsewhere in Japan. If it had been possible, he would have been deported, but no more repatriation vessels were sailing from Japanese ports. And there was no way the authorities would allow him to remain where he was, any more than Japanese aliens were permitted to move about freely or reside wherever they pleased in the United States.

If he chose to become a Japanese citizen, he would, of course, be allowed to remain with, and provide care and protection for, his invalid mother.

“Don’t give up your citizenship, Ship,” Helma had pleaded with him.

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