(See Cover)
After the Army transport had taxied to a halt on Atsugi airfield one day last week, the first man to climb down was a tall, loose-jointed officer with the three stars of a lieutenant general gleaming on his shirt collar. Said the General, grinning:
"This is the beachhead where I was supposed to land. General MacArthur gave me this area. I never expected to reach it in a plane without a shot being fired at me."
Lieut. General Robert Lawrence Eichelberger, 59, newly appointed commander of the Tokyo area, already had on hand his own crack 11th Airborne Division, commanded by Major General Joseph M. Swing, and some infantrymen of the 27th Division. This week tens of thousands more (including the dismounted ist Cavalry Division) landed from transports, swelling the body of troops toward the 500,000 or more who will land in weeks to come on the sacred soil. The occupation of Japan had begun.
Return Visit. Bob Eichelberger will set up his headquarters in bomb-smashed Tokyo. He had visited the Jap capital before, and on one occasion had started a picturesque yarn.
After World War I, as a temporary major and intelligence officer for Major General William S. Graves's expeditionary force en route to Siberia, he was one of a group entertained at a dinner by Jap officers. Eichelberger had seen no combat service in Europe, was short of medals. To keep him from being out-spangled by his Jap hosts, a brother officer insisted on lending him some campaign bars. The Japs were properly impressed.
They were impressed with more reason by the time Graves's expeditionary force was ready to go home. Eichelberger's restless inquisitiveness had landed him in many a tight spot.
His cool courage and a natural, bushwhacking ability to operate with small forces always pulled him out. For the easy, offhand job he did with a rifle in holding off a unit of Russian partisans which had attacked an American platoon, he won the Distinguished Service Cross.
Meanwhile his flair for finding out what was going on led him to the conclusion that the Kolchak regime, which the western Allies were then supporting, had no backing from the Russian people. Largely because of his finding, the Graves force was limited to guarding the railway, avoided a political blunder. A grateful War Department pinned the Distinguished Service Medal on Eichelberger's high-collared blouse.
Far East Friends. Major Eichelberger also observed closely his allies, the Japanese. Clearly they were on a mission of empire, stirring up trouble as an excuse to stay on Russian soil and establish title to some real estate.
Eichelberger, who as intelligence officer had many dealings with the Japs, blandly outwitted them, blocking them from taking over areas they wanted. For some Japanese reason, the Japs seemed to admire these efforts. At any rate, they decorated him with the Imperial Order of Meiji, the Order of the Sacred Treasure and the Order of the Rising Sun.