The General's Protector

By Bud Smythe

As an account of the rigors of becoming an infantry paratrooper and subsequently a personal bodyguard to General Douglas MacArthur, the General's Protector outlines the life of an army soldier in post-World War II in occupied Japan. Starting with the severities of growing up in dire poverty, the introduction to the military life as a young teenager, the enlistment and relocation to Japan. The General's Protector takes us from the adjustment to the extreme cultural change experienced in Japan to

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781682133712

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The

General's Protector

BUD SMYTHE

Copyright © 2015 Bud Smythe

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2015

ISBN 978-1-68213-370-5 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-68213-371-2 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Prologue

With the exception of a fast six weeks of basic training, my entire three-year military career was spent with the US Army in occupied Japan. The first year in the paratroopers was exciting and adventurous. The remaining two years was spent as a personal guard to General Douglas MacArthur, the memory of that experience has lasted throughout my lifetime.

Japan was in the very first stages of transformation from the old traditional way of life to the modern Western-influenced culture that would be infused over the next twenty years. This change would bring Japan to the cutting edge of industrial innovation and technology coupled with the worldwide marketing and distribution of a myriad of products ranging from fine textiles to electronics. This new Japan developed at a startling pace. At the close of the war, however, Japan was still in the old traditional culture, and I was fortunate enough to be an observer and to be a very minor participant in this cultural transformation.

I had arrived in Japan in the first wave of occupation just after the close of hostilities. Spending the first year in northern Honshu, I did not comprehend the scale of devastation suffered as a result of the war. Being located in the smaller city of Sendai, bombed-out buildings were not in evidence. The pockets of bombed areas were scattered in the rural countryside and localized to isolated manufacturing facilities. We saw these ruins only while on maneuvers. Our field training consisted of simulated attacks on what was, at one time, a large factory complex but was at that time just the skeletal remains of the former buildings. It was only after I arrived in Tokyo that I saw the destruction and waste caused by the bombings. A sorry sight.

In spite of the city ruins and extreme shortages, life went on in Tokyo. Men and women wore traditional dress; the women in kimono following paces behind the man, the man in formal traditional attire. As time went on, I became more fully captivated by the Japanese way of life and made an effort to share in, what was to me, a very practical lifestyle. My stay in Japan was more than just a tour of duty, it was an experience.

CHAPTER ONE

The Early Years

Growing up in a large city in what I would later come to realize was in dire poverty, I had a wonderful childhood. I was born in 1929, the year of the infamous Wall Street crash. I like to think that I had nothing to do with that terrible economic disaster, but I just don’t believe in coincidence. The crash resulted in the Great Depression, and everybody, it seemed to me at least, was poor. At that time, the government had a great welfare program: if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat. So I began my working career at an early age doing odd jobs such as sweeping floors at the local market, mowing lawns, selling newspapers and magazines, etc.

The most memorable position for me at that time was the door-to-door selling of various items that were supplied by men who came to the different neighborhoods recruiting young boys to sell their wares house to house on a commission basis. It was my first steady employment, and at the age of eight, I brought in the only income for the household. I remember one product in particular: Band-Aids. They had just been introduced (I believe we were introducing them) and came in a flat card of 10 Band-Aids at a price of 10 cents a card. They were an instant hit, and my commission was one penny per card. Bonanza! I was really doing a job, earning a whopping 20 or 25 cents per week, which, at that time, was enough for basic groceries at least. The distributor stopped by each week so I would have to hold the money to pay him for the sold items when he arrived. This created a problem due to the fact that my father, who was an alcoholic and not working, would find the money and take it for drinking. When the distributor came to collect, I could not pay him. He was kind enough to carry me for the many weeks it would take to pay him back out of my commission. In thinking back, I was probably not the only kid who had that dilemma, and carrying the debt for these kids was probably part of his marketing program. That exposure to work and responsibility has instilled in me a work ethic that has carried with me through all these years. I am sure that the early work experience had much to do with shaping my life. The biggest and the most lasting influence, however, was instilled by my mother.

In my entire childhood, from the earliest time of recollection, I could remember my father sober only a handful of times. Although he was not abusive (he never beat my sister or me) but, being continually under the influence of alcohol, disheveled and, most of the time, incoherent, it was not the greatest environment in which to develop and grow up. Throughout all those formative years, my mother was the foundation that held everything together, constantly pointing out the right and wrong, the proper and improper, and the honest and dishonest. It was she that rationalized our plight, not excusing my father’s behavior nor condemning him for his shortcomings either. She also did not try to blame society or lack of outside support or the will of God or any of the all too many excuses that are invoked by some less-fortunate people as they try to shift the blame for their plight to any source but their own. Our misfortune was the result of an alcoholic father pure and simple, and it was up to us to work around that deficiency as best we could. And we did. It was done with love and good humor and hard work.

Throughout the first eight years of school, I was a straight A student. I never had to crack a book to accomplish this and was particularly good at mathematics. This carried a great side benefit when I reached high school as the math teacher was also the truant officer, and I spent as much time with him in one category as the other. Being good in the math class saved me more than once from being in the principal’s office for truancy.

In junior high school, which was grade seven through grade nine, I was introduced to the National Honor Role. In the lower grades, very good grades were acknowledged on a local level in that particular school. In junior high school, grades took on a different challenge: the honor role (two As with Bs and Cs and no grade lower than a C) and the super honor role, which was also the National Honor Role (minimum two As with the rest not lower than B). I was receiving straight A in every subject except handwriting in which I received a consistent C. This C meant that I did not qualify for the National Honor Role. I really worked at drawing those perfect circles on the paper between the lines. I would ask the teacher for help, and she would come to my desk, draw the most beautiful continuous circles on my paper and tell me that was how it was done and I, for the life of me, could not duplicate that feat. This teacher was also my homeroom teacher and knew that her grade of C was keeping me off the National Honor Role, but she would not relent and kept me at that grade level throughout the next two years. The only other student in my homeroom to make the National Honor Role was a girl who was getting three or four As and the rest Bs but could not match the all As I was getting. She would often tell me how sorry she was that I was not making it. Finally, at the end of the eighth grade, I gave up and, in the ninth grade, started skipping school and in general goofing off. My grades plummeted, and I was just squeaking by. I am not excusing my conduct by blaming the one C or the teacher’s firm commitment to a principle but rather to the realization that the whole criterion for measuring an individual is flawed. To this day, I am not driven by any public goal and do not strive to achieve based on some arbitrary measurement. I am sure that the inability to draw little circles between the lines on school paper has affected my life in a way that no other incident has. The decision to quit high school and join the army was driven by the frustrating years in junior high school.

During junior high and high school, I was generally working, having steady jobs after school and weekends. These jobs ranged from fun jobs such as usher in a movie theater, upholstering furniture, etc., to grinding jobs like working the three-to-eleven shift in a factory making fluorescent lightbulbs after a full day of school. This work was hot and arduous but paid well. In prior jobs, I would give my entire earnings to my mother for rent and food, etc. My father had long since left, and we were just going hand to mouth—no electricity but using kerosene hurricane lamps for light, burning coal in the kitchen stove for warmth and cooking, eating oatmeal three meals a day with no sugar or milk just to mention just a few of the deprivations we suffered on a daily basis.

After getting the factory job (I was thirteen), I set up a private program for relegating my income. At that time, earnings were paid in cash in a little pay envelope. If the pay envelope contained any change, I would keep the change. As an example, if my pay was $13.28, I would keep the .28 cents. (Incidentally, that was the average pay for a forty-hour week on the swing shift.) If the pay envelope happened to come out at an even amount, say, $13.00, I would keep a whole dollar, and needless to say, it never happened. It came close a few times, like $13.03 and I would keep the .03 cents. After a time, my mother got a job as a comptometer operator in the payroll office of a government department, and my sister began babysitting and doing other work, so the financial burden began to ease up a bit. At that time, my pay was divided into quarters. Half went to the house as usual, one quarter went to the bank, and the remaining quarter was for me to spend as I saw fit. Again, bonanza! That began the good life.

Along with school and work, there was the usual boy-stuff growing up. In my case, the pastime was surviving on the street. It was the depression, and life for young boys was relatively disorganized; the only organized recreation was hanging out with friends and trying to avoid getting in trouble. We did not engage in anything malicious but had our share of mischief like stealing grapes and other fruit on night raids to backyards, picking up milk bottles from doorsteps and cashing them in for the five-cent rebate, etc. We did organize sandlot teams for football and other sports, but the most predominant memory is the fighting.

For some reason, fighting for me seemed to be the norm both in the schoolyard and on the street. I do not know whether this was because I presented a challenge or because I was kind of sensitive and, as result, looked rather easy. If the prospect of a fight presented itself, I immediately became nervous and would visibly shake or perhaps tear up. This was not because I was afraid but rather that I did not want to fight. This was, of course, mistaken as fear and the confrontation would escalate into a fight mostly because of that. Typically, for instance, when I changed schools, the school bully would eventually challenge me in the schoolyard. Having been forewarned by friends that this guy was really tough and was a bully, I would know what to expect; so when he approached me and got in my face, I would start to get nervous. This acted like a green light for him, and he would get physical. In each case, I would fight him and beat him. I remember one incident when the teacher had to pull me off this one kid, I was sitting on him, punching him while I was crying and the tears running down my face. This scenario was repeated with a number of bullies. I never started a fight but then I never lost a fight either.

I remember another incident when I was older, about fifteen. It was around nine o’clock at night, and I had just gotten off work as an usher at the Warner Theater downtown. When I came out of the theater, I saw a girl I knew waiting for the bus in front of the department store next to the theater. I stopped to talk to her, and while we were talking, two guys walked up to us and one of the guys said to me, Someday I’m going to beat you up, or something to that effect. I recognized one of the guys. He was one of the hangouts in Central Square, a local tough and obviously a bully.

Let’s do it now, I said to him immediately, forgetting the girl that I was talking to.

I’ll do it later, he replied.

No, we are going to do it right now, I stated, knowing that if I let him get by with this insult, I would be a marked for trouble every time I was downtown.

His friend tried to intervene by saying, He doesn’t mean anything. Just forget it.

I would not let it pass mostly because he had humiliated me in front of the girl. The fight was on, and I was fighting the bully while having to push his friend away at the same time. During this melee and naturally unnoticed by me, a small crowd had gathered (we were downtown so that was inevitable). When the bully and his friend finally ran away, the girl had left, caught her bus, and went home. I am sure that she was frightened, and I felt bad about that.

Getting in trouble was really easy. At fourteen and fifteen years old, we all wanted to drive. Stealing cars was the thing to do, but I would not participate in that exercise. Not that I didn’t want to drive; it was that I knew it would eventually lead to big trouble, and I could not take the chance of disappointing my mother. Knowing the environment we were living in, she would point out to