MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 172

Association. Toyoda, in turn, appointed Shiina Etsusaburo * as vice-minister, the same position Shiina had held in MCI before it became MM. It was Shiina who actually presided over his ministry's end-of-the-war arrangements, and in retrospect he must be given credit for taking quick action at a time of major confusion.

On August 15, 1945, the nation heard the

gyokuon

hoso

*the Emperor's broadcast announcing the surrender. Two days later the Suzuki cabinet resigned and was replaced by the transitional government of Prince Higashikuni. Nakajima Chikuhei, the famous aircraft industrialist, was asked to hold the portfolio for MM, which ironically put Nakajima back in nominal control of the aircraft plants that had been taken from him and nationalized only the previous June. Shiina, however, continued to run the ministry. Only ten days after the fighting stopped and barely a day before the first Allied troops arrived at Atsugi air base to prepare the way for General MacArthur, Shiina told several of his younger colleagues that he had an important assignment for them, one that they must complete overnight. They were to recreate MCI before the occupation began.

Yamamoto Takayuki, MITI's first vice-minister in 1949, has said that the overnight rebirth of MCI was ordered because all the civilian bureaucrats in MM feared that the Allies would fire or arrest anyone connected with munitions. Shiina has indicated that he also had personal reasons for wanting to put some distance between the MCI contingent and the military officers in MM, and that he recognized the necessity for getting rid of the Munitions Ministry before the Americans did so. According to various accounts, those involved in the resurrection were Yamamoto, Ueno Koshichi*, Tokunaga Hisatsugu, and Hirai Tomisaburo*, all of whom became MITI vice-ministers during the 1950's.

²⁶

Thus, by Imperial ordinance 486 of August 26, 1945, the Ministry of Munitions and the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce disappeared, and in their places were reinstalled the old MCI and the old Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

Shortly after the establishment of SCAP headquarters, Allied investigators discovered the end-of-the-war juggling of ministries, but they did not attempt to do anything about it because the changes had been in the direction the Allies wanted the Japanese to go anyway. One of the official, although nameless, American historians of the occupation merely noted, "Bureaucrats were aware that their presurrender cooperation with militarists and zaibatsu interests constituted a threat to their continued hegemony. In the weeks before the occupation began officially, personnel records were destroyed, wholesale shifts of higher officials were made, and initial steps were taken to