Hagerty in Tokio (1960)

From the July 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. James Hagerty, President Eisenhower’s press secretary, had to flee by helicopter from a crowd of six thousand Japanese students who mobbed his car and battered at the windows. Mr. Hagerty had landed at Tokio airport to arrange the details of President Eisenhower’s visit to Japan. The incident underlines the falsity of some of the propaganda that the ruling class serves out to us in time of war. In the last war all the American and British organs of propaganda repeated ad-nauseam that the Japanese were inherently militaristic: their very nature, we were told, made them warlike and aggressive. At the end of the war the Americans insisted that a clause be written into the new Japanese constitution renouncing for ever the right of the Japanese to establish again their armed forces. But soon the Americans decided that the real enemy in the Far East was not Japan, but Russia: and that Japan in fact would be a useful ally. So then the Americans insisted, against the opposition of many Japanese, that the “renunciation” clause in the Japanese constitution be scrapped, and that Japan should again set up her army, navy and air force. Now the Americans have pushed through a new military alliance with Japan. If the propaganda had been true, this would have suited the "inherently militaristic’’ Japanese down to the ground. But large numbers of Japanese are strenuously resisting the new alliance, even to the extent of rioting against Hagarty and threatening to riot against Eisenhower. Some of the opposition, no doubt, comes from those who would rather see Japan allied to China and Russia than to America; but many Japanese wish to avoid all militaristic alliances altogether, because they think they bring with them the risk of involvement in a new world war. We are not now concerned whether it is possible for Japan to stand apart from the two great camps in the world as it is today: the important point is that such a policy commands widespread support from the Japanese people. Clearly, the theory of the “inherent militarism" of the Japanese will have to be abandoned. Events have, in fact, revealed yet more of our rulers' propaganda as lies.

Alwyn Edgar