turned for help to Kay Tateishi, California-born nisei and former Domei writer. Kay later became an FCCJ member as a correspondent for Time-Life and AP. Upon Kay's intercession, General Headquarters (GHQ) angrily ordered annulment of the order. Japanese readers were able to view the photograph of the two leaders in their papers the next morning. On the same day, the Cabinet Information Board was axed out of existence.
Japanese newspapers reported that at this meeting the Emperor confirmed his readiness to take the responsibility for the war and accept whatever punishment the Allied Powers chose. His message to the nation three months later officially renouncing his divinity was a follow-up to this statement.
The story of Tokyo Rose, involving the arrest, trial, and conviction of Iva Toguri, the nisei girl who clung stubbornly to her belief in the U.S. and her U.S. citizenship through the war, is described in a twist of history in the fourth decade of this history (see p. 242), together with a disclosure of the gross miscarriage of justice that occurred.
In general, the Japanese greeted the surrender with a sigh of relief, while the full realization of what war had done to their lives began to sink in for the first time. The people were starving. Their clothes were tattered rags. Gasoline, charcoal, even soap, were difficult to obtain. People had to stand in line to get into public bathhouses, because their own homes were destroyed. Those who had been evacuated to rural areas to escape the bombs returned to find they couldn't even locate their own neighborhoods. Yet, they returned because they wanted to be home when sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers returned from the battlefields of Southeast Asia.
To the correspondents, the big question was: Where, in this deserted wreck of a capital, can we find a place to sleep? The lucky ones found vacant cabins in some of the warships lying at anchor in Tokyo Bay. Eventually, most of the newsmen made their way to the Imperial Hotel. Once Tokyo's symbol of the ultimate in class accommodations, the Frank Lloyd Wright structure was dark and smelled of mold. But it was intact except for damage to one wing.
SCAP had requisitioned the Imperial for officers of general rank. But the hotel staff welcomed the newsmen with practiced courtesy. Some correspondents refused to sign the guest register but commandeered rooms anyway. David Duncan and his companions signed with name, rank, organization, and the tongue-in-cheek postscript: "Present bill to Japanese Embassy, Washington, DC."
Some of the correspondents had been guests of the Imperial before Pearl Harbor. Staff members who knew him from those days came up to greet Russ Brines and ask about his wife Barbara. When he arrived in Tokyo somewhat later, another favored guest was Hessell Tiltman, the respected correspondent for the Manchester Guardian and three-time Club president. A doyen among the newsmen, Tiltman enjoyed the special esteem of Tetsuzo Inumaru, the Imperial's president, and obtained many favors from him for the Club.
When an army colonel finally came to check on accommodations, the friendly hotel staff shuttled the correspondents from room to room. Eventually, however, the army caught up with the journalists, and most of them moved into the nearby Shinbashi Dai-Ichi Hotel. The trouble was that this hotel, constructed for the aborted 1940 Tokyo Olympics, had been designated as the billet for colonels and majors.
So the question still hanging over the newsmen was: Where do we sleep? The Occupation forces had made no arrangements for their billeting. As quarters for the press, the Shinbashi Dai-Ichi would have been ideal. It was a two- to three-minute walk from the NHK Building (or "Radio Tokyo," as it was referred to then), in which the SCAP PRO office had taken up quarters. And GHQ had made offices available on the second floor for the major news media accredited to SCAP.
While enjoying the military privileges at the Dai-Ichi, the correspondents found hampering the military regulations which prevented them from bringing freely into the premises the Japanese contacts, assistants, and news sources they needed to help them with their work. Moreover, as new waves of colonels and majors flowed in from Washington and elsewhere to beef up the Occupation administration, SCAP made no secret of its feeling that the newsmen were unwelcome. A screen erected around one section of the dining room carried the sign "Reserved for Colonels Only."
To speed things up, Brigadier General LeGrande Diller, headquarters public relations officer, imposed a "quota" on the number of newsmen entering Japan and Korea and restricted access to press briefings and interviews. This was the same Diller who was accused by the authors of The Star-Spangled Mikado of calling the correspondents a bunch of "two-bit palookas and sportswriters." Diller's "quota" was regarded as especially discriminatory to the British, granting spots to only four of the specials and shutting Reuters out of Korea.
Boiling-mad correspondents met in a workroom of the Radio Tokyo Building on October 5 and formed The Tokyo Correspondents Club, which was to be the forerunner of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan (FCCJ) that we know today. Elected to head it were Howard Handleman of INS, president; Don Starr (Chicago Tribune) and William J. Dunn (CBS), first and second vice-presidents, respectively; Ralph Teatsorth (UP), treasurer; and Cornelius Ryan (London Daily Telegraph) as secretary.
General MacArthur rescinded the Diller "quotas," but a subsequent general meeting refused to leave the Dai-Ichi "until the club has been repaired and put in shape to the satisfaction of the committee representing the correspondents." But the members agreed to be responsible for "housing and feeding any newsman who comes to Tokyo providing he is a legitimate working journalist. It may not be good housing or feeding but, at least, the newsman will have somewhere to live and work in."
The correspondents had already decided upon their new home, an old five-story, redbrick building leased by the Marunouchi Kaikan from the Mitsubishi Estate Company. It was located in a narrow alley in the central business district of Tokyo, within a few minutes' walk of the major Occupation offices, including General MacArthur's desk in the Dai-Ichi Life Insurance Company building. Operated as a restaurant until early 1945, the building was dirty and grimy, all its windows were broken or nonexistent, but it was in as good a condition as could be expected in bombed-out Tokyo. And its layout suited the newsmen.
On the first floor were the lounge, dining room, and bar. In the basement, the kitchen. The third floor was a fairly spacious party room, with stage. The second, fourth, and fifth floors were private dining rooms, with tiny service kitchens on each floor. With a few modifications, the basement, first and third floors could be used almost as they were. The Club partitioned the other floors into sleeping rooms. The biggest problem was putting in shower heads and replacing the Japanese squatter-type toilets with Western sit-down models.
Handleman's administration set to work on the project. General Diller, stimulated by the prospect of the early departure of the newsmen from the Dai-Ichi, arranged to fly in beds and bedding from Manila and accompanied Club representatives to a meeting with the Japanese owners and tenants. According to the Club minutes, he "made it clear that if the Japanese refused to accept a fair offer, the army would take it over." The rent for the whole building was set at ¥8,000 (around $530, at the ¥15:$1 exchange rate accepted at that time) per month, and the Japanese side agreed to pay for the repairs as well. Club members agreed to contribute toward expenses by paying an initial levy of $100 per member, of which $75 would be refunded when the member left the Club. The fees were as modest for monthly dues, room rent, and meals.
And by the way, the beds brought in from Manila for the
