remain for a single day."
Hughes was retired with two months' pay. A number of members resigned, including Denis Warner, but almost all returned later. Hughes also returned to the Club occasionally to regale his friends with stories. But Denis Warner never did. He couldn't forgive the Club. All, as John Rich said, because of a terrible misunderstanding. The Hughes Affair was the low point in the Club's history, but eventually friendships were restored and the Club recovered stronger than ever.
Ho hum! Trouble! Nothing but trouble! But the Club managed to keep going. Its other activities during the year included la referendum on November 2 that approved changing the bylaws so that Guest Cards could be issued, although limited to Allied personnel with whom members did business; and there were talks with the Overseas Press Club in New York concerning the reciprocal treatment of VIPs from the two clubs when they visited each other's city.
Guest speakers at the Club during the year included Sir William Webb, who headed the Far East War Crimes Tribunal, on July 2, and General Mathew Ridgway, 8th Army commander.
As the start of a Press Club library, Ian Mutsu donated a collection of valuable books from his library at home, a gesture which elicited a vote of thanks from the membership. Gene Zenier commandeered a military truck to transport the books from Ian's home to the Club. In a follow-up to this gesture, Earnie Hoberecht proposed that the Club subscribe to newspapers and magazines for the professional use of the membership.
Closing out its social calendar, the Club celebrated its third anniversary with a party on November 11 attended by 143 members and guests. It produced a profit of $494.63 and ¥35,563.45. Another moneymaker to follow it was a "Gridiron" on November 29 at which the somewhat musical or theatrical members performed parodies of SCAP and Japanese officials. In charge of producing both affairs was Peter Kalischer, UP's refugee from the Great White Way.
1949
1949 FCCJ FACT FILE
• Membership: No record, but 47 votes were cast in a referendum in April.
• 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 until June 30: Keyes Beech (Chicago Tribune); from July 1: Allen Raymond (New York Herald Tribune).
Banner headlines reported the Red Chinese Army's steady sweep through China and victorious march into the Chinese capital. Among the widely read analyses of these developments were articles written by AP's longtime "China Watcher," John Roderick. John, who in later years served as president of the FCCJ, spent a number of months holed up in the Communist stronghold of Yenan with Mao Tse-tung.
In Japan, inflation and food shortages continued to exact their toll on the Japanese economy, forcing widespread job layoffs. These led in turn to a series of strikes, demonstrations, and acts of sabotage by left-wing groups, strengthened by the intensifying Cold War in Europe and the gains made by Communist power in nearby China and Korea.
The Communist advances in China and Japan's economic troubles put pressure on General MacArthur to rethink Allied Occupation policies in Japan. Should SCAP reinforce Japan's defense as a wall against Communist aggression, even though it was out of the question to enlist Japan as an active ally against the Reds?
In recognition of this change in the situation, General MacArthur declared in a New Year statement that it was not the will of the Allied Powers to deny Japan the right of self-defense. In a parallel move to fortify Japan's economic base, SCAP on January 14 lowered the bars, on a conditional basis, against foreign investments in Japan.
In February, the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education dismissed 246 public schoolteachers for their Communist teachings. In September, Kyushu University followed the same example in ridding itself of Communist-leaning professors, while the National Association of Teachers decided to purge the Reds in its membership.
On July 1, the Government Railway Corporation discharged more than ninety-five thousand employees. Six days after announcement of the railway dismissals, the corpse of Sadanori Shimoyama, president of the corporation, was found severely mutilated near the railway tracks in Tokyo. During the following days and weeks, demonstrations and sabotage followed one after another, resulting in other deaths. In October, the government dismissed almost forty thousand local government workers. Before and after these notices, layoffs on a smaller scale were carried out among various industries.
The violence of the leftists, however, aroused resentment and fear among moderate elements. The latter responded by forming a right-wing labor federation.
On the other hand, to bolster the economy, Joseph Dodge of Detroit, a former president of the American Bankers Association, arrived in Japan on February 1 as economic advisor to General MacArthur, and instituted a program of stiff financial measures to shore up Japan's lurching financial structure. One step was setting the exchange rate at ¥360 to $1, down from 15-to-l at the beginning of the Occupation. This step led to an inflationary rise in prices and fed demands of workers for higher salaries. Left-wing labor leaders played on this anger to foment strikes and more trouble for the government and big business.
Dennis McEvoy, president of the Japan Reader's Digest and of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, called the "Dodge Line" a major step in the direction of stabilizing Japan's postwar economy.
Dodge was followed in May by Dr. Carl S. Shoup, whose team mapped out farreaching tax reforms to back up the Dodge Line. Despite the extent of the reforms recommended, many foreign businessmen felt greater reductions were needed to encourage foreign investment, according to a report filed by Hoberecht.
Executing this program became the responsibility of Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida. In the general elections held on January 23, the Liberals won a clear majority, while the disorganized Socialists took a beating. As a result, Yoshida's third cabinet came to power, and the prime minister chose Hayato Ikeda, a tough, no-nonsense politician, as his finance minister. It was Ikeda whose unenviable task it was to make the Dodge Line work.
The Soviets raised a few hackles themselves when they announced in Moscow on May 2 that they would repatriate ninety-five thousand people, comprising "the rest" of the Japanese still in their area, by the end of the year. If they thought the Japanese would greet this with wild applause, they were disillusioned. By Tokyo's calculations, the Soviet Army had four hundred thousand
