MacArthur would not carry a sidearm for his entire six-year stint in occupied Japan. General Kenney, MacArthur’s air commander, said that he realized only in retrospect that the gesture was a masterstroke of psychology, because “it made a tremendous impression on the Japs to see us walking around in their country unarmed and simply with utter disregard of danger from the nation of 70 million people we had defeated. To them it meant that there was no doubt about it. They had lost.”29
