to one of these dinners was Ichiro Hatoyama, president of the newly formed Liberal Party. Hatoyama was a personal friend of Ian Mutsu, the British-born grandson of Count Munemitsu Mutsu, Japan's Meiji-era foreign minister. Ian, a Press Club member since early 1946 on the sponsorship of UP's Miles Vaughn, added his persuasion and Hatoyama came, bearing a gift of saké in accordance with Japanese etiquette. Instead of the friendly reception he had expected, however, Hatoyama was met with hostile questions, some planted by the newly reinstated Japan Communist Party.
Hugh Deane, BBC correspondent, Mark Gayn (Chicago Sun), and David Conde, a stringer for INS and Reuters, came primed with material, including charges that Hatoyama had written a book which praised Hitler and Mussolini as examples for Japan in Asia.
In the eyes of most Japanese, Hatoyama was a liberal who favored equality and hated Communism. Occupation officials themselves were divided over Hatoyama, with his supporters contending that his hatred of militarism and devotion to parliamentarism could, under wise Occupation guidance, lead to good government. Leftists painted him as a symbol of militarism, big-business domination, and ultranationalism. Mutsu, who had to interpret, was mortified at the treatment Hatoyama received.
The outcome of the affair was a spate of stories picked up by the leftist Japanese press, questioning Hatoyama's qualifications to lead Japan. Despite these articles, Hatoyama was elected to the Diet. Since his Liberal Party received a clear majority in the chamber, it was assumed he was a shooin for prime minister. However, SCAP stepped in and purged him before he could gain this office. Harry Emerson Wilde reported in his book Typhoon in Tokyo: The Purifying Purge that Hatoyama fell into "verbal traps laid for him by guileful interviewers. . . . The Japanese press, then largely leftists, misrepresented him." General Mathew Ridgway finally lifted Hatoyama's purge in 1951, clearing the way for him to become prime minister.
The Left's opposition to Hatoyama backfired. Its immediate result was the election of Shigeru Yoshida, prewar ambassador to Great Britain, as president of the Liberal Party and prime minister. A stocky, outspoken man whose trademark was a cigar clenched firmly in his mouth, Yoshida became the dominant leader in Japan's early postwar politics. As for the election results, thirty-nine women won Diet seats for the first time ever, setting a precedent for the rise of Japanese women to equality with men.
Japan's new democratic constitution, incorporating these and other changes, passed the Diet on October 7, 1946, was promulgated on November 3, and came into force on May 3, 1947, which thereby became Japan's Constitution Day and a holiday. Under its provisions, the power of the State reposed in the people, the Emperor became the symbol of the State, and, by Article 9, Japan renounced war as an instrument of policy. Since then, leftists have cited this "No War" article as a weapon to block Japan's rearmament.
Japan's first May Day in eleven years was a wild one. Two million people, celebrating the lifting of the ban on public demonstrations, paraded in gatherings all over Japan. In Tokyo, five hundred thousand took part, massing outside the Imperial Palace, waving red flags, trying to cross the moat into the inner palace grounds. Their mistake, William Manchester pointed out in his book American Caesar, was in misinterpreting the freedom SCAP gave to the Communists as "support" for their activities. Police beat them back.
The headline story of the year, however, was the start of the war crimes trials against Tojo and his fellow defendants. On May 3, the Far East War Crimes Tribunal met under Australia's Sir William Webb in a courtroom established in the former Imperial Army Headquarters, renamed Pershing Heights by the Allied Powers, and opened the trial of twenty-eight wartime leaders on Class A war crimes charges. Arraigned with Tojo were former army ministers Seishiro Itagaki and Sadao Araki, and ex-Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka. Also in the dock was Mamoru Shigemitsu, the foreign minister who signed the surrender documents on the U.S.S. Missouri.
If Moscow had had its way, Emperor Hirohito would have been a defendant, too. But, on June 18, Chief Prosecutor Joseph Keenan crushed the move, saying it would be a mistake to try the Emperor. FCC J members reported every development.
A forewarning of the coming Cold War came from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill when he attacked Russia's "Iron Curtain" on March 5 in a speech at Fulton, Missouri. Trouble brewed also in Asia. In Indochina, Ho Chi Minh opened hostilities to drive France out of Vietnam. In China, an uneasy truce existed between the Nationalists and the Communists.
In his book MacArthur's Japan, Russ Brines described the Tokyo of those days as a dead city groping back to life. "The youngsters were the first to recover, flocking towards the new uniforms. In a few days they were shouting 'Goodbye' as a greeting, and 'Gamu, Joe.'" Adults followed, crowding around on street corners "to stare open-mouthed at the invaders."
For the entertainment of the Occupation troops, SCAP took over the Tokyo Takarazuka Theater across the street from the Imperial Hotel and reopened it on February 24 as the Ernie Pyle Theater. For the Japanese, NHK on January 19 began broadcasting a Japanese version of the popular American radio program "Major Bowes Amateur Hour." A people who delight in singing, Japanese took to this program enthusiastically and lined up for tryouts. Many of Japan's top singing stars of the next two decades climbed to stardom via these programs, including national idol Misora Hibari, who made her debut at the age of ten. So popular was this program that NHK followed on December 3 with another stateside hit program, "Information Please." As they recovered their good spirits, the Japanese became more outgoing.
Added to the problem of food, the nation faced inflation on an unprecedented scale. Every train was crammed with farmers and their wives bent under huge packs of black-market rice and produce which they peddled in residential districts or at open-air stalls at the central railway stations. In the back streets, sushi shops operated like Prohibition-era American bars with an inner chamber where favored patrons could order the best sushi with the freshest of materials and white, polished rice, washed down with the best saké. The ordinary salaried worker had to be content with kasutori shochu, a rotgut potato brew served at street stalls in Shinbashi and Shinjuku.
Ray Falk remembers being taken to one of the better sushi shops by a Japanese friend, and, on making his exit, being accosted by an MP who berated him and checked his military credentials. Ray got off that time, but he still writhes when he recalls the rigid policing correspondents sometimes had to endure.
Ian Mutsu recalls, early in the year, when the official exchange rate was ¥15 to the dollar, buying a new jeep from the army for $1,000, the equivalent of ¥15,000. He received the same sort of grilling when he drove to his home in Kamakura and parked his jeep in front. Military personnel were prohibited from visiting Japanese homes in those days, and MPs couldn't distinguish between servicemen and newsmen.
As yen-prices rose, the dollar's worth rose also, to ¥100 by the end of the year. This was great for servicemen and foreign correspondents, but tough on the Japanese. A series of protest demonstrations followed the May Day riots. As they became increasingly violent, the ranks of the hardcore left-wing agitators were swelled by recruits from the
