Pravda, March 29, 1951
The deeper the American imperialists become engrossed in their adventurous aggressive policy in the Far East, the closer do their plans concern Japan. Dulles, attended by a whole retinue of “experts” from the US State Department and the Department of Defense, visited Tokyo not so long ago.
American official circles reported that Dulles’ mission was instructed to gather “information” on the urgent question of a peace treaty with Japan. For their part, the Japanese reactionaries hastened to declare that a separate treaty would be signed with the USA in the very near future.
The increased vigor of American diplomacy in the speediest possible conclusion of a separate treaty with Japan deserves attention. The results of MacArthur’s five and one-half years of over-lordship in Japan are well known—18,000,000 unemployed or partially employed, a lower standard of living for everybody, including the workers, and the economic bondage to American capital. In Japan today official figures show that there are 125,000 delinquent children; 16,000,000 persons do not have permanent housing and are often homeless. Today the reactionary social forces, which only yesterday plunged the Japanese people into the abyss of fascism in a criminal war of aggrandizement, are again in the saddle—guarded by American bayonets.
But the American imperialists are still dissatisfied. They wish to step up Japan’s conversion into a source of cannon fodder for the American monopolies. Dulles’ visit to Japan has a direct bearing on the ambition of US ruling circles to accelerate the recruitment of Japanese vassal divisions.
The core of the Americanized Japanese army has already been created. The so-called “reserve police corps” numbers approximately 6,000 officers and more than 70,000 servicemen of other ranks, most of whom were former noncommissioned officers and soldiers of the old imperial army. The corps has been subdivided into a “general corps,” a “supply unit,” and four “regional units,” with four divisions concealed under this modest title. Each “regional unit” (division) is composed of four conventional regiments and one specialized regiment. Generals, officers, and sergeants of the corps hold “police” ranks corresponding to military titles.
The “reserve police corps” is armed with American firearms and trained according to American regulations. Even in its present state, the corps is a Japanese-American version of the Hitlerite SS troops, which, as is known, combined the “functions” of a police force and executioner with general military training. But to the American imperialists, the “reserve police corps” is only the first step in the organization of a large Japanese army. As the American magazine Newsweek frankly stated, Japan would make an ideal US ally in the Pacific, since it possesses industrial power and a skilled labor force and since the Japanese “can fight and die with resignation.”
In exchange for Japanese divisions, the United States is “magnanimously” prepared to conclude a separate peace treaty with the representatives of Japanese reaction. The nature of this separate treaty is rather eloquently reflected by Dulles’ unceremonious explanation that the American occupation troops will “naturally” remain in Japan, even after the treaty is signed. The economic aspect of Japanese-American relations is illumined by MacArthur’s recent memorandum to the Japanese government, which recommends that Japanese tariffs be revised and that duties be removed on cotton, wool, and certain types of raw materials imported from the United States.
The American imperialists intend, with the aid of a separate peace treaty, “to legalize” their domination of Japan, to maintain their military bases, to prolong their military occupation of the country indefinitely, and to bleed Japan dry, as far as materials and primary manpower are concerned, so as to extend the war of aggrandizement.
Thus in replacing a legal peace treaty by a backstage deal with Japanese reaction, the American imperialists desire to deprive Japan of a real peace and the very possibility of peaceful good-neighbor relations between Japan and its closest neighbors—the Chinese People’s Republic and the Soviet Union—as well as between it and other democratic countries.
It is not surprising that progressive Japanese circles reacted indignantly to Dulles’ mission and to his suspicious conferences with the ringleaders of Japanese reaction.
Japanese Premier Yoshida expressed “great satisfaction” over his talks with Dulles. For their part, the American ruling circles are pleased with Yoshida.
The bourgeois Japanese-American hacks never tire of gushing at Yoshida’s “respectability” as a Japanese Premier; his exceptional “poise” and “composure.” But in all justice, we should note that Yoshida’s poise and composure have recently slipped on many occasions, especially when he sees a Communist on the Parliamentary tribune and hears what he has to say about the people’s struggle for peace, so abhorrent to him.
Naturally, Yoshida denies that Japan’s “reserve police corps” is the skeleton of the regular army being revived by Japanese imperialism. Yoshida invariably affirms that he stands “for” peace and for the strictest Japanese “neutrality” in all international conflicts. But as soon as any speaker in Parliament recalls that the peoples of Asia are resisting American imperialist aggression, Yoshida loses his composure and shrieks with irritation that Japan has been granted the role of “bastion against the spread of communism.” He calls for the consolidation of Japan’s “defenses,” and insolently threatens to terrorize the Japanese vanguard of the proletariat, promising to applyl all the “latest” fascist and American methods of suppressing the labor movement.
Yoshida’s deceitful stand of officially “denying” the remilitarization of Japan is no accident. The Japanese monopolistic bourgeoisie, the reactionary landlords, the black market profiteers, the Americanized former imperial militarist officials—all Yoshida’s parasitic social following is directly interested in clearing various forms of war profits. The remilitarization of Japan with the aid of the American imperialists—such is a common program advanced by the top command of the Japanese ruling classes. The leaders of the opposition “people’s democratic” bourgeois-landlord party, which is competing with Yoshida’s Liberal Party, speak of this quite frankly.
But Yoshida and his clique are playing a complicated game. They are striving to gain as much as possible from the interest of American imperialism in reviving Japanese militarism; by coviferously bemoaning Japan’s weakness, they are seeking to induce the Americans to spare no funds in the rearmament of the country. In addition to this, the Japanese ruling clique does not wish to shoulder the political responsibility for the country’s remilitarization. They are well aware of the fact that an overwhelming majority of the Japanese people aspire to peace and are deeply inimical to any irredentist designs of reaction. Let the Americans arm Japan and shoulder the responsibility too—such, in essence, is the official position taken by Yoshida’s government. Japanese reaction also reckons with the fact that since the American imperialists are so zealous in hunting cannon fodder, they are probably prepared not only to arm the Japanese divisions, but also to pay for them.
The Tokyo talks between Dulles and the representatives of the Japanese capitalist circles, including the representatives of the right-wing Socialists, smacked of the frankest kind of horsetrading. Thus, for instance, avowedly reactionary political groupings such as Riokufukai, knowing MacArthur’s acute need of a military “contribution” by the Japanese, demanded that Dulles immediately grant Japan the right to manufacture airplanes and to open Japanese “civil” airlines as the best security for “peaceful relations” between Japan and the USA in the future.
Japanese reaction has already become an accomplice in the military crimes of American imperialism. This is proved by the fact that the United States is using Japan’s war potential, Japanese maritime transportation, and former Japanese military personnel in a war of aggrandizement against the Korean people.
Japanese military personnel are taking a direct part in the military operations in Korea. Japanese military airdromes are being used for bandit raids by the American Air Force against Korea. Crippled American tanks are being repaired in Japanese factories. Japanese industrial concerns are engaged in the production of armaments and various sorts of war matériel for MacArthur—from heavy weapons to aviation instruments. The production of explosives is developing rapidly, through the active collaboration of American and Japanese chemical concerns. MacArthur’s headquarters is encouraging the criminal “experiments” of Japanese specialists in the field of bacteriological warfare.
Japanese Premier Yoshida and other representatives of the big Japanese bourgeoisie admit unabashedly that the war in Korea is fattening not only the American businessmen, but the Japanese businessmen as well. At the congress of the government Liberal Party, Yoshida triumphantly reported that businessmen received unusually high profits last year, which frequently exceeded the size of their capital. The net profits of several of Japan’s greatest banks exceeded 3,500,000,000 yen in 1950. According to the figures of MacArthur’s headquarters, American “special” (i.e., military) orders to Japanese industry totaled $228,000,000 on February 25, 1951. This means that not only the hands of Truman’s and MacArthur’s, but also those of former Japanese butchers of the Korean and Chinese peoples are stained with the blood of Korean women and children.
The Japanese “Zaibatsu” (monopolies) feeds on war to make excess profits and to plunder other countries, even on the terms of “junior partnership” with American imperialism. Japanese reaction, like the Western German monopolists, wish to become the US ruling circles’ chief ally in organizing and unleashing a war of aggrandizement. It is not surprising, therefore, that uneasiness is mounting in certain bourgeois political circles of England and the British dominions over the excessive “partiality” of the USA toward Western German and Japanese divisions. As the British politicians take account of the current American practice of encouraging Japanese exports which compete with British exports, they have reason to believe that the American aggressor would not hesitate “to remunerate” his Japanese ally at the expense of the British “sphere of influence,” especially in the countries of Southeastern Asia.
It is not difficult to foresee, however, that the aggressive bloc of American and Japanese monopolies and the revival of the economic and military might of Japanese imperialism will not only aggravate Anglo-American conflicts, but also engender the rebirth of imperialist rivalry between the Japanese and the Americans in the Pacific Ocean. As Japanese militarism is restored, the ambitions of the Japanese monopolies will undoubtedly soar, since their imperialist appetites will never be sated by any subordinate role.
Even today Ichimada, the president of the Bank of Japan and envoy of the Japanese financiers, refused to adopt the tone of a petitioner, upon his arrival in Washington. “I have come here,” he stated, “not to ask for further American aid, but to ascertain the ways and means in which Japan may help.”
The American policy of remilitarizing Japan is purely adventuristic.
The Japanese people, like all the peoples of the world, do not want war. The workers, the students, and the representatives of trade-union, women’s, and youth organizations of various political leanings are protesting more and more strongly against the rearmament of Japan, against the imperialist plans to impose a separate peace treaty on Japan, and against the aggression in Korea.
The Communist Party of Japan, as represented by its Provisional Central Leadership, published a special appeal, calling for the inauguration of a broad national movement, for the conclusion of a comprehensive peace treaty, and for the prohibition of a separate peace through a secret deal between American and Japanese reaction.
“A separate peace,” reads this appeal, “threatens the peace in Asia; it is designed to colonize Japan and blocks the road to independence. The time has come when all Japanese, irrespective of religious convictions or political views, must rise to the struggle in the interests of freedom, independence, and peace. Our Party calls upon the various organizations and all patriots to launch a broad national movement for a comprehensive peace treaty. … No forces could conclude a peace treaty that ignored the will of the Japanese people.”
The striking Japanese workers, especially the shipyard workers, are taking an active stand against remilitarization and for peace and national independence for Japan.
The mass arrests of persons in Japan suspected of “un-American activities,” the firing of Communists, and the repressive acts against the trade unions testify to the great sweep of the anti-war movement, which is terrifying Japanese-American reaction. In its efforts to curry favor with MacArthur, Yoshida’s government is drafting a fascist “law” to ban the Communist Party of Japan.
In spite of police repressions, the movement of the peace partisans in Japan is steadily expanding. According to a report by the Japanese committee for the defense of peace, 6,400,000 signatures to the Stockholm Petition were collected in Japan. The resolutions of the first session of the World Peace Council made a great impression in Japan. The Japanese people, who have not forgotten the explosion of the atom bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are joining the movement for the defense of peace more and more actively. The campaign to collect signatures to the Petition of the World Peace Council is being combined with the campaign for the conclusion of a peace treaty.
The Japanese workers watch with alarm and indignation as the insolence of the war criminals mounts daily, as more and more barracks are built for so-called “police” contingents.
No “screening” of the American counter-intelligence agents can avert the growth of anti-war and un-American sentiments, even among those “elite” troops of the Japanese army with which the divisions in the “reserve police corps” are being slapped together. The soldiers fear that they will be sent to Korea; they hate their American officers. In November 1950 the “ranks of the corps” in the vicinity of Sapporo struck in protest against bad treatment.
Eloquent posters hang on the walls of some buildings in Tokyo: “Down with the imperialist invasion of Korea!” “We demand the immediate withdrawal of the American imperialist troops!” “Long live the heroic Korean People’s Army, the defender of peace!”
The situation in Japan fully bears out the words of Comrade J. V. Stalin that though the aggressive forces “hold reactionary governments in their grasp and direct them,” they nevertheless “fear their own peoples, who do not wish a new war and who stand for the preservation of peace.”
Japanese reaction will be unable to halt the growth of the real people’s movement for peace and the national independence of Japan by any sort of police brutalities, staged “trials,” or sentences of Communists to hard labor.
The conspiracy of the American and Japanese imperialists, directed against peace, against the interests of all peoples, and first and foremost against the vital interests of the Japanese people, is doomed to failure.