General MacArthur's Train Car

[DanielMackay]

During the time that General Douglas MacArthur oversaw the reconstruction of Japan, he was allocated - but never used - a dedicated railcar by Japanese railways. A quick initial search turns up no pictures (perhaps because he never used it). Anyone have any leads on the type of passenger car and (likely) engine that would have been used?

[Kiha66]

Interesting, I never heard of this!  I'd be interested in learning more, all I've heard about was the passenger cars assigned to allied troops.  

My expectation is MacArthur would have been assigned one of the state coaches, of which JGR had several at the time.  A few were actually attached to military trains, so perhaps they were there for McArther's use but more likely were used by officers while the troops traveled in standard class coaches.  Japanese Wiki will probably have more info if you can translate it.

 

Motive power wise, I expect they would be given whatever passenger power was used on the line the train was running on rather than a dedicated locomotive.  

 

The state coaches, my guess is he would have been given Coach #10 from the pool

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/皇室用客車#10号御料車

 

And the page on "Allied trains", or trains that were for use of the occupation forces.

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/連合軍専用列車

Edited December 9, 2020 by Kiha66

[DanielMackay]

Kiha, thanks for your research, posts, and intuitions. 

 

The reference to an offered but never used rail car is in William Manchester's biography of MacArthur, American Caesar. Beautifully written and impressively researched; I am a bit embarrassed to have waited this long to read it.

 

I'll look for the page reference and check footnotes for further information.

[Kiha66]

I'll have to check that book out!  I've been listening to Dan Carlin's "Supernova in the East", so that would be a nice extension of the same era.