Office of the Historian

794.5 MSP/11–1452

No. 615
Memorandum by the Director of the Office of Northeast Asian Affairs (Young) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Allison)

[Extract]

top secret
[Washington,] November 14, 1952.

Subject:

  • Developments Regarding Japan.

1. Japanese Rearmament

In October Defense submitted to DMS “illustrative” and very tentative figures for the Mutual Security Program for 1954 for Japan. These dollar estimates included:

Ground Force $308,000,000
Air Force 187,000,000
Navy 30,000,000
Total $525,000,000

Late in October, some of the top FEC people told Ted Tannenwald1 that there would be no request for an air force for Japan in the Fiscal Year 1954 Mutual Security Program. This conflict is indicative of the general lack of coordinated planning which has existed on the military side.

In an effort to try to give direction to the thinking that was being done about Japanese rearmament, we drafted and (after thirty days) got Defense concurrence to a telegram to Ambassador [Page 1357] Murphy2 asking him to get together with General Clark and to come up with their best estimates as to what should be done about Japan in the Mutual Security Program for Fiscal Year 1954. The answer3 was not received in time for the Budget Bureau hearings at which Defense did a miserable job, particularly in trying to rationalize sets of conflicting figures about necessary appropriations for the support of the Japanese ground forces.

Ambassador Murphy and General Clark have now answered the telegram with the following dollar recommendations for Japan for Fiscal Year 1954:

Ground Force $147,000,000
Air Force 287,000,000
Navy 2,000,000
Total $436,000,000

These figures differ so substantially from the original Defense submissions to DMS and the Bureau of the Budget that the whole question is going to have to be resubmitted to the Joint Chiefs. This process will take so long that Defense cannot meet the Bureau of the Budget’s time schedule, and consequently it has been informally agreed that the Bureau of the Budget on its own will make certain modifications in the estimates for Japan. We do not yet know the nature of the modifications which they will make, but we have made available to them the information which just came back to us from Japan.

The major policy problem involves the commencement of planning and training for a Japanese air force. An outgoing State-Department-distribution-only telegram4 raised this problem and indicated that present Department thinking favors such a development. However, the final decision was left until we had an indication of the thinking of the Embassy and the Command. Now that we have had that indication, NA is preparing a memorandum from you to Mr. Matthews which will recommend that we proceed with planning for a Japanese air force and that we give advance notification of this fact to some of our close allies.

. . . . . . .

  1. A memorandum of Tannenwald’s conversation held on Oct. 29 with a number of FEC officers is enclosed with despatch 874 from Tokyo, Nov. 4, neither printed. (794.5/11–452)↩
  2. See telegram 1125 to Tokyo, Document 610.↩
  3. Telegram 1475 from Tokyo, Document 611.↩
  4. Telegram 1097 to Tokyo, Document 608.↩