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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 24, 12 June 1950, pp. 1 & 8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
As its latest step in “teaching democracy” to the Japanese, the MacArthur military occupation in Japan has commanded the country’s prime minister to expel democratically elected deputies from the parliament.
As an example of U.S. democracy abroad, it has done this on the ground that these deputies represent an “embryonic” threat of an “ultimate” negation of democracy through “lawlessness.”
This extreme step in reaction to “lawlessness,” furthermore, is taken in response to – a crowd scuffle with American occupation soldiers.
There is one justification given, and only one justification, for this authoritarian “lesson in democracy.” There is one reason and only one reason why this iron-fist imperialism may not get the reaction it deserves from U.S. labor and liberals. The victims are Stalinists.
Yet, this latest step of the. U.S. occupation can only result in awakening sympathy for the Stalinist “martyrs” among the Japanese who resent the foreign iron fist, and redound to the political advantage of that anti-working-class, reactionary force which works for the Kremlin in Japan as elsewhere.
The official statement by MacArthur itself sufficiently (though unwittingly) makes clear the gulf between his military command and what is supposed to be the teachings of democracy. The U.S. decree ordered that all members of the Communist Party central committee be banned from public life. The heart of the reason is given in the following paragraph:
“There could be no cruder or clearer repudiation of the cornerstone of the concept of civil liberties for dissident minorities: the U.S. Supreme Court’s concept of the necessity of showing a &Lsquo;clear and present danger’ of forcible overthrow before suppressing such minorities ...”
The MacArthur doctrine, on the other hand, is fit only to be the cornerstone of any totalitarian theory of government. The totalitarianism of both Stalin and Nazism is founded precisely on the idea of killing off any opposition whatsoever as an “embryonic” danger to the state, a “risk” to the status quo, and an “ultimate” threat to what the present rulers conceive of as the best form of government.
All of this, moreover, is ascribed to the Stalinists’ “incitation to lawlessness.” There is no need for doubting that the Japanese CP, as the agent of Moscow’s policies, is all in favor of “lawlessness” against the occupation. Democracy, however, demands that people be punished for acts and not for wishes.
The specific act which led to MacArthur’s vicious decree is another story. It underlines the anti-democratic and brutal character of his latest “teach democracy” move.
The American army announced that it was going to hold a large Memorial Day parade in Tokyo. The Communist Party of Japan decided that this was a good occasion for a counter-demonstration, no doubt in the hope of playing on the feelings of families who had lost dear ones in the late imperialist conflict.
Japanese police, acting under orders from MacArthur’s headquarters, forced a postponement of the demonstration until after the United States ceremony had been held.
Over 5,000 people assembled. While Michio Watanabe, Stalinist member of parliament, was speaking, demonstrators saw a Japanese plainclothesman taking notes. They snatched the notes' from his hands. An American officer and three enlisted men recovered the notes, and explained that the Japanese detective was their interpreter.
So for, it would seem the “incident” was the normal kind of thing likely to happen at any mass demonstration. But at this point a Japanese policeman tried to arrest a demonstrator who, he said, criticised the occupation while he was being questioned.
It would seem that in the kind of “democracy” to which the Japanese are being “re-educated” criticism of the occupation (which is the real government) is sufficient cause for arrest!
Some of the demonstrators tried to protect their man from such “democracy.” In the words of the New York Times dispatch for May 30, they “milled around the four United States servicemen and the Japanese, shoving them around. Two of the enlisted men were struck on the head by stones.” (Pictures show that the soldiers wore steel helmets, so it can be presumed the stones did little real damage.) One American soldier was knocked down in the scuffle.
It appears from the press dispatches that the Japanese involved escaped in the crowd, but eight Japanese were arrested later by United States military police. The arrests precipitated several other minor skirmishes.
The dispatches do not say that the eight men arrested were in any way connected with the original scuffle. It is quite possible that the police simply picked up eight known Stalinists. It would not be the first time police have proceeded in that manner. But whether or not the eight arrested were in fact involved in the “skirmishes” is fairly unimportant.
One of the rules of a democracy is that accused persons shall be brought to speedy trial. THIS rule was carried out, and with a vengeance! Just four days after the incidents described above, the eight Japanese were tried and convicted in an occupation court, and sentenced to from five to ten years imprisonment. The man who got the ten years sentence was designated by the prosecution not as the most violent assailant of the American soldiers, but as the “number one man among the defendants.”
Defense counsel maintained that they had not had enough time to prepare the defense, and stated they would appeal. The sentences are subject to review by Major General Waiter L. Weible, commander of the headquarters group.
The Stalinists called nationwide protest meetings against the sentences, and a one-day “general strike” in which over 100,000 workers participated, according to government estimates.
One significance of this episode can only be understood from the savage sentences given the accused. The acts themselves were of such minor character, and so common to any large demonstration in which the police are taking a “tough” attitude, that normally one would expect sentences of sixty to ninety days in the county jail. It is only when masters are trying to show their complete supremacy, and to teach their underlings to stay “in their place” that they even dream of condemning men to five or ten years of jail for daring to lift their hands against them.
But this kind of procedure is typical of colonialist-IMPERIALIST behavior. As such, it must be condemned by everyone who is opposed to imperialism, including those who claim that what America is doing in Japan is not imperialism.
The immediate effect of these sentences has apparently been to cow the Stalinists somewhat. Yet anyone with an ounce of political understanding knows that if the sentences are carried out, the American occupation has handed them eight martyrs for future exploitation. It is thus that Stalinism feeds off the foolishness and brutality of capitalist imperialism. The cause of socialism and democracy can draw strength from the same source only if all those who truly fight for freedom in America be the first and loudest to protest the imperialist practices of the American armed forces in the countries which they now occupy.
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