Councillors. One opposition leader, Tomabechi Gizo of the conservative Democratic Party, was
a delegate. It was hardly a broad-based delegation because it lacked anyone from the left-of-
center parties, but it represented the groups that were even then emerging as the ruling elements
in postwar Japan. The emperor attested the credentials of the Japanese delegation and gave its
members an audience before they departed for the United States.[24]
What to do about General MacArthur turned out to be another prickly matter of protocol. Dulles
very much wanted the former supreme commander to play a role in the signing ceremony. After
getting the approval of the State Department and the White House, he phoned the invitation on
August 11 to Colonel Bunker, who was still serving as aide to the general. The plan was for the
president to speak at the opening session of September 4 and for the general to speak the next
day at the first working session of the conference, presenting a review "based upon his five and
one-half years' experience" in Japan. Dulles would then talk about the peace treaty.[25]
A few hours after Dulles's call to New York, General Whitney, who had also remained in loyal
service to the general, called back to say in the best MacArthurian manner that the plan was
"totally unacceptable" because it seemed to put MacArthur in the position of "an attendant to the
U.S. delegation," a role incompatible with his position in Japan, where he had been the Allied
commander, "not a United States official." MacArthur felt he could not attend the conference
except "at the invitation of the Allied powers as a whole." As everyone realized, it would have
run the risk of a divisive debate to propose that the conference delegates invite the general to
give a talk. This risk was multiplied many times by word that the Soviets had accepted the
invitation to attend the conference. And President Truman's offhand remark at a press conference
that he would not object if MacArthur accepted the State Department's invitation to attend was
not calculated to assuage the general's sensibilities. Dulles issued a cagey press release that the
matter of the general's participation in the conference was under consideration but that "no
arrangements ... have been reached."[26]
At Sebald's urging Washington agreed that the Japanese delegation should be seated on the
conference floor from the start of the meeting instead of being invited to come in later. The
Japanese delegation was placed after the other delegations, but it was invited to all official
receptions. These protocol concessions provided strong evidence that Japan had started on the
road back to the comity of nations.[27]
― 302 ―
Fifty-five nations, including Japan and the three associated states of Indochina but not the
Republic of Korea, were expected to attend the conference. Three decided not to attend—India,
Yugoslavia, and Burma. The Soviet Union accepted the invitation and stated it would have
substantive proposals to make regarding the draft treaty. The Soviet presence in San Francisco
converted what might have been a dreary conclave of the converted into one of the early
diplomatic dramas of the cold war.
The meeting of fifty-two nations in the San Francisco Opera House from September 4 to
September 8, 1951, was a unique peace conference. Called "The Conference for the Conclusion
and Signing of the Treaty of Peace with Japan," it was not for negotiation. Everything had been
arranged in advance, from the rules of procedure to the text of the document to be signed. The
most careful precautions were taken against any surprises. And there were none. The conference
put the stamp of international approval, and a degree of immortality, on the handiwork of John
Foster Dulles, mightily abetted by Yoshida Shigeru, Dean Acheson, Harry S Truman, and
Douglas MacArthur (in absentia), among others. That the United States could dominate such a
star-studded conclave was surely a testament to its preeminent position in Japan and world
politics in 1951.[28]