MacArthur encouraged religion in postwar Japan
A new book on postwar Japan says Gen. Douglas MacArthur sought to
fill the country's "spiritual vacuum" with religious and quasi-religious
beliefs, from Christianity to Freemasonry, as an antidote to
communism.
In 1945 Under the Shadow of the Occupation: The Ashlar and the Cross,
Japanese investigative journalist Eiichiro Tokumoto documents
MacArthur's efforts to persuade missionaries to intensify their
efforts, even encouraging mass conversions to Catholicism.
"There
was a complete collapse of faith in Japan in 1945—in our invincible
military, in the emperor, in the religion that had become known as
'state Shinto,'" Tokumoto writes. His book so far has been published
only in Japanese.
