the midst of these problems, the Club voted a new Executive Committee into office. Allen Raymond moved up to president beginning July 1. He was backed up by Earnest Hoberecht as first vice-president, A.W. Jessup of Newsweek as second vice-president, Hugh Deane who remained as treasurer, and William Jorden of AP as secretary. Raymond resigned later in the term when he left Tokyo, and Hoberecht moved up to succeed him, with Burton Crane elected to take over his duties as first vice-president. Similarly, when Hugh Deane resigned, Hessell Tiltman was elected to take over as treasurer.
In other respects, however, life went on in Japan as usual. Beer halls, which had reopened on June 1 in Tokyo and other large cities, flourished for the first time in years. The beer halls were nowhere as fancy as they had been before the war, but boisterous crowds of suds-lovers flocked to them.
At the U.S. National Swimming Championships in Los Angeles on August 6, to which he and teammate Shiro Hashizume were invited, "The Flying Fish of Fujiyama" did it again. Hironoshin Furuhashi set an incredible five world records, including times of 4:33.3 in the 400-meter and 18:19.0 in the 1,500-meter freestyle, leaving the second-place swimmer almost four pool-lengths behind in the 1,500. This was after Japan was readmitted to the International Swimming Federation and received a ticket to the Helsinki Olympics in 1952. Too late, however, to show the Olympic fans the Flying Fish of Fujiyama at his record-breaking peak.
In the academic world, Japanese scholars went into a frenzy of delight when the name of Dr. Hideki Yukawa of Kyoto University was announced on November 3 as winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics.
On October 18, GHQ announced the termination of censorship on Japan's broadcasting companies, and followed this on October 24 with a similar termination of press censorship. On the following day, it announced the end of the war crimes trials in Japan, and disclosed that more than 700 Japanese had been executed while 2,500 were serving life sentences.
GHQ announced a series of measures to encourage Japanese to travel in the United States. They included a program to send representatives of 150 categories of work to travel to the United States and allowing women to take tests for U.S.-sponsored scholarships to study in the United States.
In another indication that some things that were a part of the good old days were returning, the Nichigeki Theater held its first postwar tryout for girls to become members of the Nichigeki Dancing Team.
1950
1950 FCCJ FACT FILE
• Membership: No records, but Club files indicate that 350 correspondents covered the U.N. forces during the Korean War.
• 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: Allen Raymond (New York Herald Tribune); from July 1: Burton Crane (New York Times).
Tension over the expanding East-West confrontation spread through Japan after Mao Tse-tung's Communist forces took over Mainland China. General Douglas Mac-Arthur stated on New Year's Day that the Allied Powers would not deny Japan the right of self-defense. This opened the way for Japan to form a national police force to face down the challenge of domestic left-wing groups and, by easing MacArthur's Occupation burden, let him later focus his attention on Korea. For the foreign correspondent, however, early 1950 was a slow period occupied with writing situationers instead of front-page news stories.
Japan was a story struggling to compete in a world dominated by the East-West conflict in Europe and China when war would erupt in Korea and instantly become history's first United Nations stand against aggression.
In Tokyo, the Yoshida Government, with SCAP's help, focused its efforts on the nation's economic recovery, but progress was proving difficult. Helping lighten its fiscal burden, eighteen thousand travelers visited Japan in 1949, spending $8 million here. But to ease the persistent food shortage, the government increased rations of rice and other staples and lifted price controls on dairy products, fish, and alcoholic spirits.
To complicate matters, the USSR on February 1 repeated its demand for the trial of Emperor Hirohito on war crimes charges, while in the tug-of-war with leftist groups, the Yoshida Government on February 13 fired 246 public schoolteachers as Communist sympathizers. On March 25, some 310,000 coal miners went on strike in retaliation. Five days later, leftist demonstrators attacked five uniformed members of the Occupation forces in front of the Imperial Palace. Police responded by permanently banning demonstrations on the grounds in front of the Imperial Palace and in Hibiya Park, two favorite gathering places for leftists.
Later, on June 6, SCAP struck directly at the source of the unrest, purging members of the Japan Communist Party's Central Committee from public office. Ten days later, the Yoshida Government imposed a total ban on public demonstrations and gatherings throughout the country.
Through all this SCAP pushed the normalization of Japan. On March 7, GHQ introduced a parole system for war criminals, opening the way for the release of former Foreign Minister Shigemitsu on November 21 after he had served four and a half years of a seven-year sentence. To speed up Japan's return to foreign trade, SCAP allowed the Koei Maru to leave Japan on June 22 with a cargo of steel products for South America.
Foreign correspondents routinely reported Japan's step-by-step recovery, but took time out to elect a new Executive Committee to govern the Press Club for its July 1950-June 1951 term. Burton Crane (New York Times) was chosen president, Roy Macartney (Reuters) first vice-president, A.W. Jessup (Newsweek) second vice-president, Joseph Fromm (U.S. News & World Report) treasurer, and William Jorden (AP) secretary. When Crane later retired with injuries suffered in Korea, he was replaced by Hessell Tiltman.
Correspondents looking forward to another ho-hum weekend were blasted out of their beds by news from Korea. The first flash came into the Tokyo bureau of the United Press on Sunday, June 25, from Jack James in Seoul.
BULLETIN-SEOUL, JUNE 25 (UP): REPORTS FROM THE 38TH PARALLEL INDICATE THAT NORTH KOREA LAUNCHED A GENERAL ATTACK ON SUNDAY MORNING ALONG THE ENTIRE SOUTH KOREAN BORDER.
It was the scoop of the decade, the beat that's the dream of every newspaperman. In his book The Forgotten War Remembered, Bill Shinn of AP ungrudgingly
