Tokyo Underworld by Robert Whiting Read Free Book Online

parties on both the highest and lowest rungs of the social ladder, the Occupation turned out to be a very profitable exercise. And the entangled web of veiled, mutually beneficial cooperation that underlay the whole process, sometimes bringing together the unlikeliest of bedfellows, was now in place. It would reveal itself often throughout the rest of the century.

2. Occupation Hangover
    The special relationship between the United States and Japan begun during the Occupation entered a new phase with the signing of the Mutual Security Treaty on April 28, 1952, which formally terminated SCAP rule. Officially hailed in Tokyo as ‘fair and generous’, it gave Japan her freedom and stipulated that America provide Japan’s defense. Yet ordinary Japanese, perhaps, found little reason to cheer. Under the terms of the treaty, Japan had been forced to commit herself, reluctantly, to America’s hard anti-Communist stance vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and China and allow the stationing of 120,000 US troops on 150 bases dotting the Japanese isles. The country, in effect, remained occupied, and over the next several years a string of unpleasant occurrences served to remind the people of that fact. In November 1953, a Tokyo pimp drowned after three American soldiers threw him into a central city canal. In a similar incident the following month a Japanese salaryman lost his life. Then, in 1954, it was the
Lucky Dragon
affair, in which a Japanese fishing boat was irradiated accidentally by a US atomic bomb test in the Marshall Islands, causing the eventual demise of the ship’s captain. These outrages were followed by successive episodes in 1957 and 1958, when bored military sentries discharged their weapons and accidentally killed off-base Japanese.
    Equally annoying may have been the bombardment of propaganda delivered in Japanese and English by the Voice of America and the activities of the various US intelligence agencies, who maintained a close surveillance over the people they were supposed to be protecting. The VOA had initially reported, for example, that the captain of the ill-fated
Lucky Dragon
died from a ‘liver ailment’ (not atomic radiation as was later confirmed). It also issued other nuggets of disinformation such as the following:
    Today, let’s report on war brides. In the past ten years, over 5,000 war brides have gone to the United States. They have all gotten used to a new land and a new environment. They have nice, kind loving husbands and cute children and are spending each day happily.
    Sometimes we are asked about racial prejudice against negroes in the U.S. Well, America is a free and democratic country and there is no such thing as discrimination. There’s no difference between black and white. Both lead abundant lives.
    Letters of protest sent to the VOA regarding the inaccuracies of broadcasted reports were passed on to CIA offices in the US Embassy, where they were placed in a special file for potential troublemakers, who were then ‘interviewed’ by American intelligence. Other forms of thought control included the US State Department ban on export to Japan of films like John Ford’s
Grapes of Wrath
and
Tobacco Road
, as well as others that dealt with social injustice in America. On the other hand, proceeds from those films the United States did allow to be shown, such as
Roman Holiday, The Greatest Show on Earth
and
Shane
, were funneled to anti-Communist groups in Japan to circumvent yen–dollar conversion restrictions. (Revenue from petroleum sales was used in the same way, as was that from sales of the Japanese-language edition of
Reader’s Digest
.)
    That aside, it was business as usual. Most sectors of Japanese industry, back in the hands of prewar owners, were busy churning out, at first, armaments, munitions, equipment, supplies and other military-related products to support the conflict in Korea. Then they moved on to other types of industrial manufacturing, thanks to a well-educated