An Inoffensive Rearmament Read Online Free Page A

declared that Japan was ready to sign a peace treaty with any nation. That opened the way for a separate peace treaty with the United States and shut the Soviet Union out of any negotiations. The first card in the game of “total diplomacy” had been played.
    The next two power plays were more direct. In 1950, there were two viable aspects of communism in Japan: the Japan Communist Party and Soviet Union’s representatives on the Allied Council of Japan in Tōkyō. These two elements of Soviet influence had to go.
    The Japan Communist Party was a legal political organization, permitted by General Headquarters (GHQ) in November 1945 to exist as a political party. It subsequently had several delegates elected to the Japanese Diet. In the depressedcity areas, the party had considerable influence among the unemployed and dispossessed. In Ōsaka, for example, the Communist Party leader, Shiga, had received overwhelming support from the electorate. By 1950, communists were aggressively organizing noisy cells in the universities.
    The first blast offensive against communism was fired by General MacArthur. In an elegantly phrased press release, SCAP declared,
    [The Japan Communist Party] has cast off the mantle of pretended legitimacy and assumed instead the role of an avowed satellite of an international predatory force and a Japanese pawn of an alien power policy, imperialistic purpose, and subversive propaganda.
    That it has done so at once brings into question its right to the further benefits and protection of the country and laws it would subvert and raises doubt as to whether it should longer be regarded as a constitutionally recognized political movement.
    The announcement was a pointed invitation to the Japanese government to outlaw the Communist Party. It was not an occupation forces directive, but it left no doubt in anyone’s mind what SCAP wanted. The days of good feelings and friendly fellowship were at an end. The cautious prime minister, however, was not eager to stick his neck out. Though he gave General MacArthur’s press release customary lip service, he made no overt move against the communists.
    Impatient with Japanese reticence to act, SCAP moved directly against the Communist Party. It sent out Dr. Walter C. Eells, an employee of the Civil Information and Education Section, on a one-man campaign against communists in universities and colleges. This was a sudden, unprecedented departure from past occupation policy. Up until the Eells campaign, it had been the accepted procedure for SCAP officials to advise university administrators, professors, and students on educational matters, but Americans customarily avoided politics. Though many officials, of course, spoke out in private against communism, Dr. Eells was the first SCAP emissary to launch a public anticommunist crusade. The reaction at the universities was violent. When he appeared on the platform at Tōhoku University in northeastern Japan, communist-led students raised such a howl that his lecture had to be canceled. This was the first time that a Japanese audience demonstrated directly against someone from SCAP. In Tōkyō, we wereshocked. Dr. Eells made additional attempts to address other university groups, but his appearances were greeted with increasing violence and disorder. Finally, when President Nambara of Tōkyō University joined the students protesting that “[Dr. Eells’ views] do not, in some respects, harmonize with the national circumstances of Japan,” the harassed doctor was sent home. The Japanese educators, it would appear, had imbibed so deeply the theory of American democracy that our effort to crush communism in the country was momentarily frustrated by their devotion to our teachings.
    On May 30, 1950, events took a new turn. Thousands of Japanese gathered in what was announced as a “People’s Rally” on the Imperial Palace Plaza, in full view of the Dai Ichi Building,