Langdon Warner (1881–1955) was an American art historian with general expertise in East Asian art. Born into a prominent New England family, he grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was educated at the Browne & Nichols School, and attended Harvard University, graduating in 1903 (he was named Class Poet, and became acquainted with the family of William James). He then travelled in Egypt, and joined the Pumpelly-Carnegie Expedition to Central Asia (modern day Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan), an archaeological mission funded by the Carnegie Institution and directed by geologist Raphael Pumpelly. On his return, Warner dabbled further in archaeology, in landscape architecture, and in publishing, casting about for a career. Then, in 1906, fortune singled him out, courtesy an appointment from Harvard President Charles Eliot, to undertake research in the Far East, for the benefit, in part, of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Warner set sail for Japan in June 1906. He would spend three years there (1906–1909). He studied first in the Tokyo area, for a year and a half, under Okakura Kakuzō, author of The Book of Tea (1906). “Sensei is of course wonderful,” he reported in a letter home, “but mighty unsatisfactory when it comes to hard nails. When I told him that I wanted some orders from him, he said, ‘Of course you do—I will give them to you, don’t go to the Museum too often.’” Warner next went to Nara, where he studied fifteen months more. Warner learned to speak Japanese and became an expert on Nara art of the eighth century. He visited Japan many times thereafter, until 1938, for the purposes of further study and to gather artwork for transferral to the U.S. The visit in 1938 was to gather material for the Division of Pacific Cultures in the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939 (held in San Francisco). He became a lecturer at Harvard, though he was never given a professorship or granted tenure. He was named Curator of Oriental Art at the Fogg Museum at Harvard (est. 1895).
Yanagi Sōetsu (1889–1961), a leader of the mingei movement (involving folk art and crafts) came to Harvard as a visiting lecturer from August 1929 through July 1930, and organized two exhibitions while there. Warner and Yanagi assisted each other, the two being very much in sympathy. Warner would also become close to Yashiro Yukio (1890–1975), an art critic who studied in Europe in the 1920s. Yashiro had published a well-received study of Botticelli in English in 1925. The book, in three volumes, was innovative in its photographs of details in Botticelli’s paintings. Yashiro lectured at Harvard for a semester in the first half of 1933.
During World War II, Warner was involved in the work of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, commonly known as the Roberts Commission after its chairman, Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts. In the postwar period, many in Japan came to believe that Warner’s efforts for the Commission led the U.S. to spare Kyoto and Nara from heavy bombing. I will address myself chiefly to that question, given that Warner’s role in these events has been poorly understood.
On June 1, 1949, more than sixty people convened in Kyoto. As the Kyoto Shimbun reported, they’d gathered to propose that a monument to Langdon Warner be erected in Kyoto, commemorating his efforts to shield Kyoto and Nara, as they supposed he had, from damage during the war. Watsuji Haruki, at the time mayor of Kyoto, had met Warner when the latter visited Japan in 1946. Now, as head of the Kyoto Tourism Federation, Watsuji was one of two sponsors of this proposal. The plan was to have the monument ready for a visit by Warner to Japan in 1950.
The proposal, in a slightly different form, was somehow relayed to Warner in the U.S. He must have quickly written, and apparently with some alarm, to J.M. Plumer (1899–1960), Fine Arts Advisor in Tokyo. Plumer was about to head off to Hokkaido, but on July 13 he wrote George H. McClellan, Assistant Civil Information and Education Officer in Kyoto during the occupation. “It has come to my attention,” Plumer said, “that there is a movement afoot to erect a memorial bronze bust of Langdon Warner in Kyoto. Presumably, Professor Sueji Umehara at Kyoto University will know something of it, and in any case Takata-san [Takata Osamu, a specialist in Buddhist art] could make inquiries, find out who the persons involved may be, and drop the appropriate discouraging hints.” “This is simply to inform you,” Plumer continued, “that Warner has written that ‘no living man should be so commemorated,’ and that he would appreciate having the thing stopped.”
In 1949 the office of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) was permitting Japan to open up to tourism from foreign countries. Something like a bronze bust of Warner would have been thought a nice symbol of gratitude from Japan to the U.S. This Warner monument never came about. However, a separate proposal later in the year, called for a peace tower to be erected to celebrate Kyoto’s being untouched by the war. This was also cancelled, on account of local opposition, as reported in the Kyoto Shimbun on November 8. And why? Kyoto had, in fact, suffered attacks by individual American bombers, resulting in deaths and injuries, the two major attacks being on January 16 and June 26, 1945. In both cases the original targets were in Nagoya, with Kyoto becoming a target of opportunity. Furthermore, many houses had been razed to create firebreaks. Everyday life was underlain with a level of fear and dread. To say Kyoto had been untouched by war was offensive to many.
Warner, together with others, had indeed made efforts to protect Japan’s cultural treasures. But the fact that Kyoto and Nara escaped major destruction was not due to these efforts. Warner died in 1955. This meant, of course, that he could no longer block construction of monuments in his honour. Monuments were built to him in Kyoto, Nara, Kamakura and other places.
The Bombing of Japan in March 1945
For ten days in March 1945 Major General Curtis LeMay (1906–1990), in charge of air operations against Japan, decided to use a new bombing strategy. Instead of high-altitude precision bombing, for which the B-29s were designed, he decided to try firebombing four of the country’s major cities. On the night of March 9–10, 1945, Operation Meetinghouse, as the Army called it, killed perhaps 100,000 people in Tokyo. A number of factors came together to create a veritable holocaust.
Nagoya was attacked on March 11. On the night of March 13–14, 274 B-29s bombed central Osaka. It seemed Kyoto, Japan’s fourth largest city by population, would likely be next. But on the night of March 17 it was, in fact, Kobe’s turn. The Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japanese Morale,issued in 1947 by the U.S. Government Printing Office, reports the following: “In March 1945, when the people in Kyoto thought that they were going to be bombed, many became quite hysterical. For a good many days the streets of the city were filled with people pulling carts, bicycles, and other vehicles laden with their possessions, out of the city. Word had gotten out that Kyoto would be wiped out by bombs and there was a near panic.” In the event, Kyoto wasn’t attacked. Nagoya was yet again bombed, on March 19.
Why had Kyoto been spared thus far? Rumors circulated. One especially absurd theory held that General Douglas MacArthur was in fact half Japanese, and his mother a Gion geisha. Surely MacArthur wouldn’t allow his mother’s native city to be destroyed. Arthur MacArthur, Jr. (1845–1912), Douglas’s father, also a career soldier, had, in fact, spent time in Japan in 1905–6. But he was accompanied by his wife, a native of Virginia. What’s more, the couple’s 25-year-old son Douglas joined his father as aide-de-camp in October 1905. And that father had not been in Kyoto in 1879, when his son Douglas was conceived; he’d been serving in the United States.
Others believed that the presence in Kyoto of Mary Florence Denton (1857–1947), affectionately known as “Miss Denton,” saved the city. She taught at Doshisha Girls’ School and was an eminent missionary. There is no evidence that this would have swayed the American Air Forces.
The Field Report Covering Air-Raid Protection and Allied Subjects in Kyoto, Japan (1947) explained that the people figured their city “would not be bombed inasmuch as it was not a military target.” This was in fact the case. However, with the destruction of other cities, war industry relocated to Kyoto and it became a likely target.
Another opinion held that the Americans protected Kyoto owing to its cultural significance. Of this significance the Americans were, of course, generally aware. However, this was complicated by a singular fact: In May, the Target Committee overseeing preparations for the atomic bombings selected Kyoto as its first choice. Why? The city’s size and topography meant that it would be easy to assess the power and effects of the bomb. (I might point out here that the destructive power of the two bombs deployed in August was, in fact, much greater than had been expected, and the noxious effects of radiation grossly underestimated.) Because Kyoto was an intellectual center, the Committee felt that the revolutionary importance of the new weapon would be readily understood, in particular by scientists attached to Kyoto Imperial University. In reality Kyoto’s “cultural” importance was of no concern to the members of the Target Committee. As of May 15, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Niigata were listed as “Reserved Areas,” not to be a target of conventional bombing missions. To help preserve the secret of the atomic bomb, it appears that Kyoto might still be a target of opportunity, when a plane was not able to hit its primary target. As for Nara: its small size, and lack of industry, kept it off target lists through to the end of the war.
On May 30, 1945, Secretary of War Henry Stimson asked Major General Leslie Groves, top military administrator of the Manhattan Project, what targets had been chosen for the nuclear bombs the project had developed. Groves intended to submit this information first to General George Marshall, above him in the Army chain of command, but the choice wasn’t really his: he had to let Stimson see the report—and Kyoto topped the list. Stimson immediately countermanded the decision. In the weeks that followed Groves kept asking that Kyoto be restored but Stimson refused to yield. It should be noted that Groves was certainly angered by what he called Stimson’s “interference”; he thought politicians ought not meddle in targeting decisions. Nevertheless, Stimson made his position clear, and he had the authority to sustain it. Kyoto was preserved from all targeted bombing campaigns, nuclear and conventional, through to the end of the war.
The Creation of the Langdon Warner Myth
The head of the Civil Information and Education (CIE) Section in the Occupation for October to December 1945 was Lieutenant Colonel Harold G. Henderson (1889–1974). He had worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1927 to 1929, in the Asian Art section. He then lived in Kyoto for three years (1930–1933), studying the Japanese language and Japanese art as an independent scholar. While in the city he started to collect paintings and porcelain, which he could sell in the U.S.: “I got some quite wonderful stuff, some of it in various museums now,” he later said. He published a book on haiku, the Bamboo Broom (1933), and translated An Illustrated History of Japanese Art (1935) by Kyoto University professor Minamoto Toyomune (1895–2001), an excellent book. From 1934 Henderson taught Japanese at Columbia University. He spent a sabbatical year in Tokyo in 1937–1938 and later wrote a book on Japanese grammar.
When Henderson arrived in Tokyo he was delighted to discover that Kyoto and Nara had been spared. Tanaka Ichimatsu (1895–1983) was a Japanese art expert who was awarded the Charles Lang Freer Medal in 1973. In his acceptance speech Tanaka told a story, involving the CIE, which must have dated to the latter part of October 1945. He said:
A gentleman of stocky build, in the uniform of an army lieutenant colonel, extended his hand to me and, with a pleasant smile, said, speaking in Japanese, “Nice to see you after so many years, Mr. Tanaka. How have you been?” Holding his hand, I studied his face and was truly surprised. My memory turned back to ten years earlier [1937–38: in reality eight or so years earlier] and I recalled Professor Harold Henderson, who had visited me at my home bringing with him many paintings by Okyo, Buncho and other artists. … This same Professor Henderson was the gentleman I was now seeing again. For a moment I did not recognize him in his army uniform, for an interval of many years had passed. We at once resumed our old friendly relationship and began to chat about art without regard to formality. He introduced me to some other gentlemen in the next room … [George Stout, Laurence Sickman and Walter Popham] … I was surprised to find that these gentlemen, now in army uniforms, were all expert scholars on Eastern art. On that particular occasion I learned for the first time that orders had been issued in the United States during the war, thanks to the good offices of Mr. Langdon Warner, to exclude Nara, Kyoto and other centers of ancient art from the ravages of air raids. It was at that time, too, that Colonel Stout, an expert on wall paintings, and I congratulated ourselves on the safe survival of the Horyu-ji wall paintings. On the same occasion I also learned that it was the United States Government’s intention to station Military Police at important temples and shrines in order to safeguard art treasures from thieves and trespassing military personnel.
Henderson got to visit Kyoto in January 1946. An interview with him appeared in the English Mainichi newspaper of January 7. Asked why Kyoto was not bombed during the war, he stated, “a special advisory committee for the preservation of world wide art treasures known as the Roberts Commission, headed by Justice Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court, and including scholars on Japanese arts, played an important role in this issue.” He didn’t mention Warner.
I might point out that most movable cultural properties were moved to safe places as American bombing became widespread in Japan. In Kyoto they went first to what is now the National Museum. When that filled up, many other artifacts were placed in safe storage at Daigoji temple. Other objects were sent further away. A major task was gradually bringing these things back in 1945–6. At first many Japanese thought the Americans would acquire great artworks as reparations, as the Russians had done in Germany. This wouldn’t be the case.
A small Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section (MFAA) group was established as a part of the CIE to deal with the issue of Japan’s Art Treasures and Monuments. The key member was the conservationist George L. Stout (1897–1978) who was close to Langdon Warner. Stout had worked in Europe in 1944–45 for the MFAA. This group was charged with the protection of and documentation of damage to European cultural artifacts, as well as the investigation, location, recovery, and repatriation of art that had been plundered by the Nazis. (The role played by George Clooney in The Monuments Men [2014] was loosely based on Stout.)
Stout arrived in Japan on October 15, 1945, and immediately set to work. In a letter to Charles Sawyer of November 13 he explains what his task was: “We’ve got three main targets to shoot at: record of damage done by combat operations and military occupation, prevention of further damage, and location and security of any looted works.” In a 1962 interview for Reminiscences of Harold Gould Henderson, done at Columbia University, Henderson said: “The ‘Arts and Monuments’ … thing was … very necessary,” and its work was done, he added, “under a very capable man [Stout] who knew all about it.” “I had practically nothing whatsoever to do with it,” he said, “except to check and see that it was done. The object of it was to make a complete inventory of the great art objects of Japan, showing that they were in perfect condition or were not in perfect condition when we arrived, whichever it was, so that if anything happened to them, we could not be blamed.”
Stout kept a diary. In an entry dated October 29 he notes a visit from Yashiro Yukio, who became an official Liaison with the Ministry of Education on art matters. We can track the misidentification of Langdon Warner as the person who saved Nara and Kyoto to this visit. Yashiro was responsible, in large part, for an article published in the Asahi Shimbun on November 11, 1945. Under the headline “American Art Curator’s Pleas to U.S. Army Saved Kyoto and Nara from B-29 Bombings,” the Asahi article was republished, in English, in the November 19, 1945, issue of the Nippon Times. Speaking of the Committee for the Protection and Preservation of Art Objects and Historic Sites in War Zones, the article reported that “its main object was … to save priceless art objects and historic places from the damage of guns and fires in the battle zones of Europe and the Orient.” The article then made the following claim: “When bombings began on Japanese towns, Langdon Warner, curator of the Oriental Section of the art museum attached to Harvard University, made unflagging efforts to have Kyoto and Nara exempted as … targets.” The piece also mentions Warner’s wife Lorraine d’Oremieulx Roosevelt (1887–1965), a second cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt. A quotation from Yashiro capped off the piece: “If Kyoto and Nara had been razed, it would have been practically meaningless to expound on Japanese culture.”
The “Report of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas,” prepared in 1946 by the Roberts Commission, said: “In Italy the Air Forces used the maps of all the important cities to prepare specially annotated reconnaissance photographs showing the most important artistic and historic monuments, for distribution to Army Groups. Accompanying these photographs were lists that established priorities in the consideration of cities as targets; i.e. those in class A were not to be bombed, those in class B could be considered limited targets, and those in class C could be targets at the discretion of the tactical commander.” In Japan nothing similar had happened, but it was surely not unreasonable to suppose it had.
The key point is whether the Americans and Yashiro purposely misled the public in crediting the Roberts Commission with saving Kyoto and Nara. In 2023, the George Leslie Stout Papers, held in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, were digitised and made available online. I have found two pieces of evidence there which seem proof to me that the Americans themselves were misled rather than deceiving. In Stout’s diary for March 20, 1946, we read: “Received letter from H. [Huntington] Cairns, secy Roberts Commission … giving broad general comment about work of comm. but no answer to my questions about specific connection between comm. operations and tactical operations which resulted in sparing Kyoto and Nara from bombardment. Apparently no connection there.” Not until he received the letter here described could Stout be sure that the Roberts Commission had not been responsible for the protection of Kyoto.
In the Stout Papers we also find a letter from Stout to Otis Cary of December 30, 1974:
When I reached Tokyo in October 1945, I was assigned to a division of CI&E in which the senior officer was Lt. Col. Harold Henderson. I was in the Navy. Henderson had been a professor of Japanese history at Columbia I was told. One day at lunch he told me that he was expecting a visit from Yukio Yashiro and asked me to be with him. I had known Yashiro in Cambridge.
When we met, Yashiro spoke of the gratitude of the Japanese people for the respect that had been paid by the military of the U.S. for Kyoto and the neighboring Nara. He said that it would be fortunate if the sparing of those cities could be credited to one person or agency. Henderson and I looked at each other and, as I remember it, shook our heads.
We both knew that Langdon Warner, during the early days, weeks, and months after Pearl Harbor, had been deeply worried about the people and the monuments of his beloved Japan. I knew that he had made many trips to Washington to intercede for those persons and those monuments. I did not know whom he had seen or what he had accomplished. I doubt that Harold Henderson knew much more.
We told Yashiro that, to our knowledge, the one person who had tried with greatest zeal to spare those cities was Langdon Warner. I knew nothing about the episode with Secretary Stimson; Henderson gave no sign of knowing about it.
To my mind this shows that it was Henderson’s error, compounded with Yashiro’s enthusiasm, that led to the Warner story at a time when it still wasn’t clear at all what exactly had happened to save Kyoto.
(End of Part 1)