any of the other Allied sources in Tokyo, and often obtain quotes to fit his own particular line of thought. Brines, in a footnote to Sebald's comments appearing in the same book, said in most cases, these skirmishes between MacArthur and the press "were magnified out of all proportion." He did stress, however, that during the early Occupation years, the press corps did have a tightly knit leftist group which sometimes distorted its stories. He insisted, however, that the majority of the correspondents were "conscientious and honest, and covered the Occupation fairly and thoroughly."
Brines saw as one reason for this situation the military mind of the officers around MacArthur and their "sense of supersecrecy." He said that freedom of the press often was curtailed, but he added, "I believe this was due less to MacArthur's policies than to the fact the Occupation was conducted by military men." Mathew Ridgway, who replaced MacArthur in April 1951, was more outgoing and gregarious than MacArthur was, and press relations seem to have improved under his tenure.
1947
1947 FCCJ FACT FILE
• Membership: No record, but 41 members were present at the general meeting on December 2, 1947.
• Professional events: Military briefings, press conferences, and interviews. No record of Club events.
• Social events: Inaugural party, Anniversary party, and New Year's Eve party. No record of other events.
• President January 1-June 30: Tom Lambert (AP); from July 1: George Folster (NBC).
It was in 1947 that Richard Hughes, after an impetuous falling out with his boss in Sydney, wired his resignation, and found himself without a job in Tokyo. "Like most of the significant events in my life, my improbable appointment as manager of the Press Club . . . appears, in retrospect . . . to have reared up and bitten me in the rump like an act of God, unexpected and indeed not necessarily wanted," Dick says in his book Foreign Devil.
He wandered into the Press Club one day just as members were demanding managerial reform and a new deal for the discontented. "A crazy contagious cry was suddenly taken up and stormily repeated . . . I found myself hoarsely echoing the shouts without quite knowing what I was supporting. The hysterical demand was for the appointment of a newspaperman as manager, with dictatorial suzerainty over the gentlemanly Japanese manager, on the theory that a newspaperman would understand and anticipate colleagues' desires and problems. But who? . . . Again, mysteriously and anonymously, at first shyly and then thunderously, the cry was taken up: 'Dick Hughes!' Why, of course, old Dick, good old Dick, out of a job and on his arse."
Dick's regime lasted for eighteen months under three different Executive Committees and three different presidents. "It was often harrowing but it was sometimes rewarding," he said. He had an outstanding Japanese staff in Kei Kawana, the manager, Akimoto-san behind the bar, the Chinese accountant "Mr. Ling," and "the only efficient bilingual telephone switchboard in the Occupation. . . . [W]e ran the show as essentially a pressman's reservation, inn, refuge, tabernacle and rookery, with traditional sanctions and conventions that, in honorable theory, were none the less binding because they were unwritten, but in Shimbun Alley application, were all the more fragile because only erratic vigilante self-discipline operated."
Hughes mentions in his managerial diary, which he kept to depict the passing Japanese scene as then viewed from No. 1 Shimbun Alley, that the unofficial "rule," requiring all visitors and guests to vacate bedrooms at 4 A.M. was quietly rescinded at an Executive Committee meeting in February 1947. He noted that it had already lapsed, unofficially, but it was decided to end it officially.
He expands on this in Foreign Devil: "To escape technical liability for registration as an Occupation 'house of assignation,' the club introduced this regulation in the rough pioneering days of 1945-46, and so mustered a sullen, yawning harem of tousled ladies, in varying stages of undress, into the club lounge each morning to await the breakfast-gong, which eventually signaled the dawn of another day and legitimized return to the bedrooms."
Though the Americans were in the majority, other nationalities were represented in the Club. The British and the Australians were present in full force. The French and Dutch were represented. The Australian contingent was a loyal source of support for Dick Hughes, as were the Asian contingent from China, the Philippines, and India.
As the Press Club under President Tom Lambert moved into its second New Year, Japan faced two difficult problems, inflation and unrest caused by the newborn, militant left wing aspiring to power. General MacArthur set an example to the Japanese government by crushing the first of these challenges to the ruling authority, and he aced the rising militancy of the labor unions and their left-wing student allies, which sprang up after SCAP removed the bans on them. The National Federation of Government Workers Unions called for a nationwide general strike on February 1 to back its demand for higher wages.
In any case, the Japanese seemed to be adapting to inflation. In mid-February, fleets of pedicabs began appearing in the big cities, making up for the taxi shortage. At a price of ¥10, a two-kilometer ride for two in a bicycle-drawn carriage proved an instant hit, not only with the Japanese, but also with novelty-loving GIs.
If inflation posed a problem to Japan, it also created a headache for the Press Club. The treasurer of the new administration, Hessell Tiltman, warned Lambert and the other members of the Executive Committee (Carl Mydans as first vice-president, Howard Handleman, second vice-president, and Burton Crane, secretary) that "heroic measures" would be needed to keep the Club going. To the questions of finance, membership classifications, and privileges, the committee responded by drafting a test budget for the next three months. At the same time, the Club voted against approaching the army to take over the Club.
Later, on June 20, John Luter, chairman of the Billeting Committee, reported the Club had forty members of whom thirty-five were living in the Club's twenty-four rooms. Among the plans proposed to meet the Club's expenses were a dance every week and increases in the dues. Secretary Burton Crane's minutes for a meeting on February 27 reported that the members approved a resolution to lower monthly dues for associate members from ¥600 to ¥200, while raising monthly dues for resident members from ¥300 to ¥400.
It was about this time that William Salter, a British naval officer and accountant, became a familiar figure in the Press Club, was asked and did
