WITHOUT THE LAW
399
content is fascinating-including such items as a psychiatric examina–
tion of Yamashita which makes Dr. Binger's observations on Whittaker
Chambers appear profound by contrast, and the story of the defense's
final effort to get a commutation of the death sentence from Truman,
who was represented by the incredible General Harry Vaughan-and
the style is vivid and simple. Its theme is obviously an important one.
The publisher promoted it vigorously. Leading newspapers throughout the
country--except, curiously, in New York City-have treated it sym–
pathetically in editorials and book reviews. Yet to date it has sold less
than 5,000 copies. There is simply not enough of a public for serious
books on political subjects to make it profitable to publish them; I
speak with special feeling, because my own book on Henry Wallace sold
equally poorly, despite its appearing while Wallace was running for
president. (In the Winter, 1949, issue of
American Quarterly,
W. T.
Couch, director of the University of Chicago Press, uses the history of
Mr. Reel's book to illustrate this dismal
~ituation;
he notes, incidentally,
that the book, despite its importance and readability, was turned down
by a number of New York publishers; the university press is becoming
the only refuge for serious political writing.) In Japan, the book is on
MacArthur's personal index. The
Tokyo Shimbun
was rebuked by
MacArthur's press officer for daring to review it; the Hosei University
Press wanted to put out a translation but had to drop the idea. Copies
have even been confiscated from the American occupation forces them–
selves-thus neatly illustrating Paine's point about he who oppresses his
enemy establishing "a precedent that will reach to himself." The grounds
for this censorship are that the book is "damaging to the occupation,"
which it indeed is. The damage was done, however, the day the Amer–
icans hanged an innocent man for
raisons d'etat.
As the prime mover
in that crime and blunder, General MacArthur is especially sensitive to
the damaging effect of Mr. Reel's book.
(2) The Yamashita case was the first of the war-crimes trials. It
was also, so far as I know, the most unjust.
It
fits into a pattern. The
Japanese-Americans were moved, en masse, to detention camps during
the war, on strictly racial lines, regardless of individual behavior or
patriotism; German-Americans were not so treated. Our troops killed
most J apanese who tried to surrender, but treated German prisoners
according to the laws of war. I believe both the great war crimes trials,
in Nuremberg and in Tokyo, to have been unjust and illegal ; but there
was at least this difference in favor of Nuremberg, that Goering and
his Nazi colleagues had exterminated millions of Jews and perpetrated
other previously unheard-of horrors, while Tojo and his colleagues had
