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1946
1946 FCCJ FACT FILE
• Membership as of June: 40, of whom 35 were resident.
• 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 from January 1-June 30: Robert Cochrane (Baltimore Sun); from July 1-December 31: Walter Simmons (Chicago Tribune)
Less than two months after the correspondents moved into their Press Club, a new administration under Bob Cochrane of the Baltimore Sun took over for the next six months of 1946. Emperor Hirohito got the year off to a jump start, choosing New Year's Day to issue an Imperial Rescript telling the people he was not a God-Emperor and should not be the object of worship. For a people taught to revere their ruler with reverence as The Supreme Being, the repository of their trust and confidence, this was like the end of the world. For Club members, it meant getting out of bed, taking a hangover pill, and filing the story.
Cochrane, as president, was assisted by Frank Robertson, INS, as first vice-president, Morris Landsberg of AP in the second vice-president slot, and Ralph Teatsorth of UP and Guthrie Janssen of NBC as treasurer and secretary, respectively. With the war ended, head offices were transferring their personnel to new centers of action. Uncertain when a correspondent might be moved out of Tokyo, the Club limited directors to six-month office terms. As it was, even before the first term expired, Lands-berg had been assigned to Korea and Janssen to Shanghai. The Club replaced them with John McDonald (London Daily Mail) and Burton Crane (New York Times), respectively.
While the Japanese wondered what the future held for them, survival was their biggest problem. Taking note of their plight, the U.S. Department of the Army on January 3 announced that Japan needed three million tons of food urgently. This set in motion a massive U.S. aid program, which started with a shipment of California rice arriving in Yokohama on March 24 and reached a peak of 450 tons of milk, clothing, and other goods on November 30 from LARA (Licensed Agency for Relief in Asia).
SCAP's second priority after disarming Japan was democratizing the nation. On January 4, SCAP initiated a purge of militarist Japanese leaders from public office, then broke up the zaibatsu business cartels and their network of interlocking companies, expelling their top leaders.
Left-wing groups were elated by the return to Japan of Japan Communist Party leader Sanzo Nozaka on January 26. Nozaka received a tumultuous welcome after sixteen years away from his homeland, most of the time in Mao Tse-tung's stronghold in Yenan. His return multiplied the effect of SCAP-ordered measures lifting the wartime bans on labor unions and their May Day gatherings. In line with Occupation directives, meanwhile, the Japanese government set to work drafting a new constitution incorporating these and other democratic principles.
Japan's first postwar election, held on April 10, was a test of the changes introduced by the Occupation. Though not yet incorporated into Japanese law, the draft prepared with Occupation input doubled the number of franchised voters by lowering the voting age from twenty-five to twenty and recognizing woman suffrage. Women were also permitted to run for office. To woo the newly enfranchised, the political parties emphasized women and younger candidates in their slates.
The lead-up to the April 10 election was where the Press Club first became entangled in Japanese politics. The Club invited the leaders of the four main parties to a series of pre-election dinners, where they could explain their platforms. Invited to one of these dinners was Ichiro Hatoyama, president of the newly formed Liberal Party. Hatoyama was a personal friend of Ian Mutsu, the British-born grandson of Count Munemitsu Mutsu, Japan's Meiji-era foreign minister. Ian, a Press Club member since early 1946 on the sponsorship of UP's Miles Vaughn, added his persuasion and Hatoyama came, bearing a gift of saké in accordance with Japanese etiquette. Instead of the friendly reception he had expected, however, Hatoyama was met with hostile questions, some planted by the newly reinstated Japan Communist Party.
Hugh Deane, BBC correspondent, Mark Gayn (Chicago Sun), and David Conde, a stringer for INS and Reuters, came primed with material, including charges that Hatoyama had written a book which praised Hitler and Mussolini as examples for Japan in Asia.
In the eyes of most Japanese, Hatoyama was a liberal who favored equality and hated Communism. Occupation officials themselves were divided over Hatoyama, with his supporters contending that his hatred of militarism and devotion to parliamentarism could, under wise Occupation guidance, lead to good government. Leftists painted him as a symbol of militarism, big-business domination, and ultranationalism. Mutsu, who had to interpret, was mortified at the treatment Hatoyama received.
The outcome of the affair was a spate of stories picked up by the leftist Japanese press, questioning Hatoyama's qualifications to lead Japan. Despite these articles, Hatoyama was elected to the Diet. Since his Liberal Party received a clear majority in the chamber, it was assumed he was a shooin for prime minister. However, SCAP stepped in and purged him before he could gain this office. Harry Emerson Wilde reported in his book Typhoon in Tokyo: The Purifying Purge that Hatoyama fell into "verbal traps laid for him by guileful interviewers. . . . The Japanese press, then largely leftists, misrepresented him." General Mathew Ridgway finally lifted Hatoyama's purge in 1951, clearing the way for him to become prime minister.
The Left's opposition to Hatoyama backfired. Its immediate result was the election of Shigeru Yoshida, prewar ambassador to Great Britain, as president of the Liberal Party and prime minister. A stocky, outspoken man whose trademark was a cigar clenched firmly in his mouth, Yoshida became the dominant leader in Japan's early postwar politics. As for the election results, thirty-nine women won Diet seats for the first time ever, setting a precedent for the rise of Japanese women to equality with men.
Japan's new democratic constitution, incorporating these and other changes, passed the Diet on October 7, 1946, was promulgated on November 3, and came into force on May 3, 1947, which thereby became Japan's Constitution Day and a holiday. Under its provisions, the power of the State reposed in the people, the Emperor became the symbol of the State, and, by Article 9, Japan renounced war as an instrument of policy. Since then, leftists have cited this "No War" article as a weapon to block Japan's rearmament.
Japan's first May Day in eleven years was a wild one. Two million people, celebrating the lifting of the ban on public demonstrations, paraded in gatherings all over Japan. In Tokyo, five hundred thousand took part, massing outside the Imperial Palace, waving red flags, trying to cross the moat into the inner palace grounds. Their mistake, William Manchester pointed out in his book American Caesar, was in misinterpreting the freedom SCAP gave to the Communists as "support" for their activities. Police beat them back.
The headline story of the year, however, was the start of the war crimes trials