Charles Foreign Corresponden

Foreign Correspondents in Japan


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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.

       "No. 1 Shimbun Alley"

      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 Club by MacArthur's staff were for hospital use and stood waist high. That's all the Club had, according to John Rich.

       Ad for staff attracts 2,000

      The next problem was staff. The army agreed to provide a chef and an assistant. Hired as overall manager was Ludwig Frank, Japan-born of English-German parentage, and a fluent Japanese speaker. His Japanese manager was a Mr. Kobayashi, whose wife was an Englishwoman. An advertisement for jobseekers attracted a line of two thousand Japanese stretching from the Press Club building to the nearby Central Post Office. Most of the applicants were rank amateurs who couldn't speak a word of English. Out of these, Cochrane and Ryan selected sixty of the best for jobs ranging from bootblack and stewards to waitresses and switchboard operators. The two bartenders were promptly dubbed Jackson and Smitty.

      For a while, the Club had no access to PX facilities, but this was remedied in the following year. Meanwhile, Tom Shafer of Acme Newspictures loaded up two weapons carriers with goods from a ship leaving for home, according to The Star-Spangled Mikado, and set up a store in the lobby. He also provided a dice table and cleared more than $1,000 for the house in the first week. The house took in $2,000 by mid-December, getting the Club off to a good start. Soon, the bar also had five slot machines and a pool table and dice boxes appearing on every table.

      Army nurse Rosella Browning of New York City created dining room curtains and aprons for the waitresses out of parachute cloth. Los Angeles-born Marchioness Chie Hachisuka produced shoes and materials for their uniforms.

      Among the new staff members hired the following year was a smiling, fresh-faced young man who had been discharged from the Japanese Army in the Philippines as a corporal before he saw any fighting, and had subsequently attended an English language school operated by the Foreign Office. His name was Kotaro Washida. He was hired as a night switchboard operator. But he was such a gifted young man that he was quickly given other duties to perform as well. Eventually, Washida-san became the Japanese manager after Kei Kawana left, serving several generations of Press Club members in this capacity.

      Other Japanese staffers whose services date from these early days include such names familiar to old-timers as "Smiley" Matsuoka, Hajime "Jimmy" Horikawa, and "Mister Ling," the Chinese accountant who kept order in the Club's chaotic financial affairs. Later came a whole slew of librarians, and Mary Ushijima, the California born nisei woman who "mothered" the Press Club members for thirty-eight years, from 1950 to 1988. The switchboard staff Mary headed was known to all and sundry as "The Best Bilingual Switchboard Staff in Japan."

      In an important edict, Frank Kelley (New York Herald Tribune), Rules Committee chairman, opened full membership to all women correspondents who met the requirements of regular members. The new rules also made the wives of correspondents eligible