this car was occupied. I'll get out." "That's all right. What's Miyoshi's?" Replied Bob, "Just the best cat house in town." "What are we waiting for? Let's go. Driver! Miyoshi's. Incidentally, I'm Errol Flynn."
Flynn, who happened to be in Tokyo making a film, took such a fancy to Miyoshi's that his whole film crew moved into its hospitable surroundings for the remainder of their stay in Tokyo.
Miyoshi's is no more, another casualty of Tokyo's constant rebuilding binge. So what was it like? It used to be in an Eastside Tokyo house, according to Al Cullison. It had a big party room with tatami-mat floor, where the girls poured drinks for the guests and made them feel like they were the world's greatest gift to womankind. When you made your exit from this party room, your girl took you across a Japanese garden with a pond and a tiny bridge to a nest of smaller rooms where she would see that her guest was properly bathed, helped into a fresh, cleanly starched yukata, and bedded down in a comfortable futon. And if you had happened to have a broken leg, she'd make such a fuss over you, you'd hope it would never heal. If, after her treatment, you felt, "Now, here's someone who appreciates me," you were only being human. Many of our Korean War heroes learned at Miyoshi's about the mysterious Orient.
There's something about an outstanding photographer that gives him a sensitivity and perception that's the envy of many a newswriter. Carl Mydans is one such photographer. So is David Duncan.
On the front flap of his book More Than Meets the Eye, Carl discusses this photographic third eye that good lensmen seem to possess. He says, "The restless force behind all photographers is an urge to communicate what they see. Much of what they see is in their photographs, often, as well, a good deal of what they feel. But there is always something left over, some spoken word or warmth of sun or smell of death that stays on unrecorded after the picture has been made and printed. These 'extras' of sensation and experience are what make so many photographers tireless storytellers. Not only are they men who think in images; they are subjective about what they see. Unlike the passive spectator, they become involved emotionally as well as physically, in what they report."
He adds, with the undeniable punch of truth, "No camera that was ever late for an assault was ever 'filled in' later by comrades in journalism or survivors of the action. The camera must always be there. And behind it, there must always be a man's eye, and a soul."
When Duncan covered the Japanese surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, he had time to grieve for the humiliation of an enemy, Mamoru Shigemitsu, who had lost a leg to a would-be assassin's bomb in 1932. Shigemitsu, Duncan reports in his photo-book Yankee Nomad, "had a terrible, humiliating, and probably painful time" trying to climb the ship's stair-ladder to the main deck, and then get from there over to the table where he was to sign the surrender document. "No one went forward to help him," David said.
Incidentally, Duncan is the photographer who made the 35 mm Nikon the camera of choice for news photographers all over the world, replacing the heavy, cumbersome Speed Graphic. According to Ian Mutsu, who left UP to start up his own newsreel company about that time, Duncan had heard good reports about the 35 mm produced by Canon. When he arrived in Japan, he became friendly with Jun Miki, the idol of Japanese cameramen. Miki tried to set up a visit to the Canon plant but was rebuffed. Miki then arranged a visit to the Nikon plant, where Duncan was welcomed with open arms, presented with a camera, and a variety of lenses and other accessories, which he tried out in Korea. He was so impressed that on his return, he publicized the Nikon everywhere he went. From that point on, the rest is history.
The gravity of the situation in Korea and elsewhere had brought home to the American people the need for a stronger Japan. Tokyo had already received indications that the peace treaty would be concluded sooner than expected. President Truman had taken the first step in April 1950 by appointing John Foster Dulles peace treaty advisor to the State Department. Dulles made two quick trips to Tokyo in early 1951 to discuss with Prime Minister Yoshida the peace pact and a mutual security agreement. After drawing up drafts based on these talks, Washington sent out copies of the peace draft together with invitations to fifty nations to participate in a peace conference to open in San Francisco on September 4.
During a report explaining these two treaties to the Diet session in August, Yoshida also revealed that he had requested the U.S. security forces to stay after the peace treaty to guarantee Japan's security. On September 8, the peace treaty to officially end World War II for Japan was signed in San Francisco by forty-eight Allied nations and Japan. The Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia refused to sign. India, which did not attend the conference, later signed a separate peace treaty with Japan as did Nationalist China. Immediately after the adjournment of the peace conference, the United States and Japan met separately to sign a bilateral mutual security pact providing a U.S. security umbrella for Japan, with U.S. troops to remain in Japan and use its facilities.
Japan's Lower House ratified both the peace treaty and mutual security pact in October and the Upper House in November. Ratification cleared the way for these treaties to come into force on April 25, 1952. Underlining Japan's coming change in status, the Nippon Times carried the story under a San Francisco dateline and the byline of executive editor Goro Murata as "Special Peace Conference Correspondent." Other Japanese newspapers were represented by their own correspondents in San Francisco.
As SCAP, General Ridgway began the task of transferring to Japan the administrative functions the government had hitherto exercised under SCAP's orders. The Communist-leaning left wing did its utmost to fight back.
On April 27, Ridgway announced that he backed the Yoshida Government's ban on a May Day gathering in front of the Imperial Palace. Reluctantly, the left-wing Sohyo Federation of Labor called off its mammoth central demonstration slated for the Imperial Palace grounds and settled for a number of smaller gatherings. When the government called a Constitution Day rally on the same palace grounds on May 3, however, Sohyo sent five hundred militant demonstrators with red flags to disrupt it. In the resulting melee, police arrested thirty-seven of the Sohyo members.
Subsequently, Ridgway transferred to Japan the right to review laws issued by the government under the Occupation directives, including the purges, education reforms, labor laws, and the police system. With the support of many Occupation officials, who believed the Occupation purges had gone too far, some seventy thousand persons, many of them minor officials, were depurged. Among the big names on this list was Ichiro Hatoyama, former president of the Liberal Party, whose first chance at becoming prime minister was quashed at the Press Club in 1946.
1952
1952 FCCJ FACT FILE
• Membership: No records.
• Professional events: 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: Joe Fromm (U.S. News & World Report); from July 1: William Jorden (AP).
While Japan was waking to the realization that peace and a return to the democratic community of nations had their own pitfalls, the attention of foreign correspondents in Japan was focused on Korea,