interesting sidelight on this is the report that Dick Hughes was a double agent for Britain's MI6, peddling disinformation to the Soviets for the spy agency. The authority for this statement was Richard Hughes, Jr., son of our Dick Hughes, in his autobiography Don't You Sing, released in Australia in 1994. A review of the book, written by Michael Perry, was carried in the No. 1 Shimbun in June 1994. According to this story, Dick Hughes, Sr., was approached in 1950 or 1951 by Russians at a party in Tokyo. "They told him that they had been impressed by the accuracy and prescience of his reports for the Sunday Times in London," Dick, Jr. said. "They offered to pay him money if he would pass on some of his classified information to them."
Dick, Sr. told his friend Ian Fleming, creator of the James Bond spy novels and foreign manager of the Sunday Times. Fleming wrote back telling him to take the Russian offer, pass on information which MI6 would send to him, and ask the Russians for double whatever they offered.
"To dad's amusement and delight the Russians fell for it, paid him double the sum," the son wrote. While working his double life, Dick used the code name Altamont, the same name used by Sherlock Holmes in his last adventure. But he never kept any money because it was siphoned off and diverted back to MI6. According to the son, his father was the first Western journalist to interview British spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean after they defected to the Soviet Union, and was used as a model character in spy novels by Ian Fleming and John le Carré.
Between events, there were other stories to keep correspondents busy. One was the Elizabeth Sanders Home, founded by Mrs. Miki Sawada, daughter of the wealthy Iwasaki family which founded the Mitsubishi conglomerate. At the orphanage she started at her home in Oiso, near Yokohama, she took under her care children of mixed-blood parentage, born to U.S servicemen and their Japanese girlfriends. (GHQ enforced a ban on marriages between U.S. servicemen and Japanese women.) Press Club members helped make her good works world-famous.
Elsewhere, this was the year that ten-year-old Misora Hibari, precocious daughter of a fishmonger, appeared on the stage of a Yokohama Theater and belted out jazz songs with an aplomb that lifted her to stardom as Japan's top postwar jazz singer.
In sports, the International Swimming Federation accepted Japan back into its membership, but too late for the Japanese natators to take part in the London Olympic Games. A miffed Japan staged its national swimming championships on the same days as the London Games, and Furuhashi was timed in 18:37.0 in the 1,500-meter, beating out Hashizume by 0.8 seconds, and 20 seconds faster than the winning time at London.
Japan, home of earthquakes, gave correspondents something else to write about. A magnitude 7.2 temblor struck Fukui, a rayon textile industry center on the west coast of Shikoku, on June 28. Carl Mydans and Kay Tateishi happened to be in Fukui on that date.
There was no warning, Mydans recalled in his book More than Meets the Eye. "The concrete floor just exploded with a brute thrust. Tables and dishes and cutlery flew into our faces and we were hurled into a mad dance, bouncing and rebounding about like popping corn." Somehow they struggled outside. The open lawn of the billet where they were staying "was split into great fissures, opening and closing as the ground heaved."
Carl and Kay went back inside to pick up their cameras. Their work enabled Life to beat everyone with their photos and accounts of the disaster which killed 3,895 persons, injured more than 16,000, and destroyed 40,000 homes.
Howard Handleman focused attention on SCAP's work in democratizing Japan, with a story from a provincial township, Minami Kakanezawa. This story, carried in big headlines on the front page of the Japan Times on May 16, told of the rush by farmers to buy the farmland appropriated from absentee landlords and parceled out to the tenant farmers under the American-sponsored land reform program. This was the first time the farmers of Japan were given the opportunity to own their own land.
On the industrial front, a big step in Japan's comeback was launched by an engineer, Soichiro Honda, who founded the company that produced Honda's Dream D motorcycle and made cycling history.
Meanwhile, the Press Club was scratching its head over its perennial monetary troubles. The minutes for February 12 indicated the Club had been discussing with the army the possibility of transferring the club's charges and maintenance costs to the Japanese Government Board of Trade through the Occupation's procurement system. But the negotiations fell through.
Other schemes discussed included money-making parties and arrangements for affiliate members and more guests, but somehow each proposal seemed only to invite more bitter discussion and no long-term working program. The question of affiliate members came up and it was agreed this needed further study. An application for an office by an insurance company was tabled. A proposal that the Club give up its billets and move into smaller premises had no better success.
Another proposal to cut costs was to dismiss the Club's foreign manager, reflecting a growing feeling among some members that the Club could no longer afford the salary of Richard Hughes. The issue came to a head during a critical transition period, when the Folster administration made way at the end of June for a new one, which took charge of the Club beginning in July with Keyes Beech (Chicago Daily News) as president, Allen Raymond (New York Herald Tribune) as first vice-president, John Rich (INS) as second vice, Hugh Deane (Telepress), treasurer, and Earnest Hoberecht (UP) as secretary. In August a group of resident members addressed a letter to the Executive Committee saying, "We, the majority of the resident members, have come to the belief that the Club can no longer afford the relatively expensive services of a foreign manager, valuable as those services have been in the past."
Unfortunately, due to the absence in Tokyo of one or another of its members, the committee later arrived at a final decision at a time when Hughes had taken home leave in Australia. Rich and Hoberecht recall that the committee members were waiting for Dick Hughes to return so they could discuss the problem with him. "But someone suggested it would be kinder to cable Dick their decision so that while still in Australia he would have an opportunity to look for another job," they said.
That cable set off an explosion that almost blew the Club apart. Hughes had many friends inside and outside the Club, and the pro-Hughes contingent demanded a special meeting, which President Beech called on August 26. There he explained the reasons for the decision and for notifying Dick in Australia. But the Hughes supporters refused to be appeased. They demanded to know why the decision had not been discussed with the membership at large and with Hughes in particular.
One of the petitioners for the special meeting, Denis Warner, passed on a letter received from Hughes, who arrived at Kure the following day, August 27. "I have always had and still have a high personal regard for all members of the Executive Committee," Dick said in his letter. "Therefore, I was all the more surprised that they in my first absence from the Club in eighteen months should seize the opportunity to act against me. In Australia we have a very short, sharp, ugly word for such practices. I want to make it clear and I hope all members who voted for me realise that once my attention was drawn to any substantial body of club opinion against my retention as manager,
