October 9, 1951
THE FISHERMAN
Page 3
THE JAPANESE PEACE TREATY
1. Hurrying Off To War
The week-end of September 8-9, 1951, was a busy one for the diplomats and a momentous one for the millions of ordinary people the world over who so fervently desire peace.
On Saturday, September 8, at precisely 11.45 a.m., the representatives of 49 governments signed a peace treaty with Japan in the Memorial Opera House at San Francisco. "The San Francisco conference . . . went off on schedule," reported The New York Times.
That same afternoon the busiest of the diplomats, United States Secretary of State Dean Acheson, the man who held the stop watch at San Francisco, concluded a military alliance with Japan in 14 minutes flat. (TREATY GIVES U.S. BASTION IN JAPAN—The Vancouver Sun, Sept 10.)
Still in a hurry, Mr. Acheson herded fellow travellers Herbert Morrison, of Great Britain, and Robert Schuman, of France, on board an airliner and sped to Washington.
There ithey got down to the business of preparing a peace treaty with West Germany (allowing Nazi re-armament) and the revision of the Italian Peace Treaty»(to allow Italian re-armament).
Whatever else one might say about these three gentlemen, no one can honestly accuse them of being dawdlers. They work fast.
But it would be wise to ask, "Where are they going in such a hurry?" Why such unholy haste to sign a military alliance with the plotters of Pearl Harbor, to make friends with the masters of Buchen-wald, why the hurry to write a new and softer peace treaty with an Italian government which is thirsting to re-arm?
This pamphlet will seek to show, through a factual examination of the Japanese Peace Treaty and its background, that the three gentlemen concerned are dragging us very quickly down the road to. World War III.
At San Francisco there was an abundance of formality (the diplomats signed with gold fountain pens manufactured expressly for the occasion). But, much more important, how much humanity was there at San Francisco?
In their haste, did the diplomats stop once to think about the million children of Korea whose small bodies have been rendered into charred corpses by flaming gasoline jelly?
Did they, in legalizing the re-arming of Japan, consider that they might be condemning millions of children everywhere to death in a war of annihiliation?
2. A War Treaty
The Japanese must be made to drink deep of the medicine of defeat if they are to be discouraged from precipitating another war in (a generation or two. They must not be let off lightly or treated softly. Fed on military doctrine, they would only interpret leniency as a sign of weakness.—"What to do with Japan," by Wilfrid Fleisher, in Life Magazine, April 16, 1945.
WASHINGTON, July 12 — (U.P.) — The'United States announced today detailed allied plans for a soft Japanese peace treaty. —United Press dispatch by James E. Roper, July 12, 1951.
In his final address to the San Francisco conference, Mr. Acheson called the Japanese peace treaty "a true act of reconciliation."
Was it really an act of reconciliation or an act of remilitarization? Is the treaty merely an instrument of the cold war, another step toward World War III? Or is it a genuine peace treaty which not only formally ends World War II, but which also helps consolidate world •peace?
The Vancouver Sun and The New York Times admit frankly that the treaty is merely an instrument of the cold war.
"The signing of the treaty, so far as the cold war is concerned, is only another manoeuvre," The Sun editorialized, Sept. 5. "The signing signalled the beginning of a new phase in the cold war . . ." commented The New York Times, (Sept. 9.)
The Japanese peace treaty is, in fact, a war treaty because its proclaimed purpose is to re-arm imperial Japan. Japan's Premier Yoshida did not sign a' peace treaty, but a contract to provide cannon fodder for aggression in Asia.
We don't need Mr. Gromyko to tell us this, we need only read our daily newspapers for confirmation.
The Vancouver Sun's special correspondent at San Francisco, Roy Brown, wrote on Sept. 4: "This treaty and a bi-lateral security agreement to follow . . . mean the re-emergence of Japan as a great power and specifically as a great military power."
The United Press dispatch from Washington on July 12, the day the United States revealed the treaty's terms, was equally frank: "Japan rets full freedom to re-arm and to build up its industries."
No wonder Herbert V. Evatt, former president of the United Nations General Assembly, has denounced the treaty as "a threat to peace and security and in violation of international justice."
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About the Author
The editorial board of The Fisherman is pleased to announce that it has obtanied the rights to reprint the contents of a booklet written by Ray Gardner on a subject of key concern to all fishermen and shoreworkers, in fact, all   Canadians,  the Japanese Peace Treaty. It will appear in two installments   in the October 9 and   16  issues of The Fisherman. It is an outstanding analysis of the treaty backed by extensive research.
The author is a young Canadian newspaperman and magazine writer with an experience of 14 years on leading daily newspapers and as a free lance writer. Born in Victoria, B.C., on September 12, 1919, he makes his home in Vancouver.
Mr. Gardner was formerly 'city editor of The Vancouver News-Herald, news editor of The Vancouver Sun and executive editor of The Edmonton Bulletin.
He was a regular contributor to Maclean's Magazine and his articles have also appeared in Reader's Digest, Liberty and other magazines.
In 1947 a panel of Canadian editors selected him as Canada's "outstanding young newspaperman" and he was awarded the first Lord Kemsley Empire Scholarship in Journalism. He spent 14 months travelling and studying in England and the Continent.
In 1950 he was one of two British Columbia delegates to the Second World Peace Congress, held in Sheffield and Warsaw. On his return he became executive-secretary of the British Columbia Peace Council, which office he still holds. Additional copies of the pamphlet may be obtained by writing Ray Gardner, 2075 East Third Avenue, Vancouver, B.C., Price per copy is 10 cents.
RAY GARDNER
'Evatt was deputy prime minister and minister for external affairs in the former Labor Government of Australia. At U.N. he has been one-of the most consistently bitter critics of the Soviet Union and has long been a darling of Time and Life reporters who in 1945 eulogized hirri as the "hero" of the founding conference of the United Nations at San Francisco.)
Evatt knows perfectly well that a re-armed Japan will not be a reconciled Japan, but a resurgent Japan. "The overwhelming majority of Australians are convinced," he said on the eve of San Francisco, "that the draft treaty menaces the physical and economic safety of the South Pacific and South-eastern, Asia and unashamedly deserts all standards of international justice for the fatal objective of temporary expediency."
"The treaty is a wholesale repudiation of the Tokyo Bay armistice agreement," he went on, "and of the Far Eastern Commission's 1947 agreement, solemnly agreeing that Japan will never be permitted to reestablish her forces and industrial might for rearmament . . . The agreements are treated as scraps of paper."
Evatt could have added that the new peace treaty and the U.S. military alliance are a repudiation of the Potsdam, Yalta and Cairo agreements, signed by the great Allied leaders and sealed with the blood of millions.
At Potsdam, the Allied leaders declared that the future peace and security of the Pacific required that Japan be made "politically democratic, economically stable and strategically neutral."
As the occupying power in Japan the United States was charged with the responsibility of carrying out the decisions made at Potsdam. Instead, she has signed a military alliance which renders Japan strategically an American base in Asia.
The next time you hear an American statesman speaking piously of the sanctity of international agreements, be sure to observe the scraps of paper at his feet.
3. An American Bas6
Recent broadcasts appear to signify that the ultra-nationalists and the ultra-rightist elements welcome the security pact with the United States and see there an opportunity for eventual re-armament with the help of United States arms and thus a chance to regain a leading position in Asia sooner than by any other method. — Ina Telburg, leading U.S. sociologist who was brought up in China and Japan, writing in Saturday Review of Literature, August 5, 1951.
Had the United States desired a genuine peace treaty with Japan it would have created "a politically democratic, economically stable" Japan in accordance with Potsdam as a prelude to withdrawal of its occupation forces. (We shall see later that Japan is neither democratic nor economically stable.)
Instead, the United States staged the San Francisco conference to create the legal basis for turning Japan into an American military base.
The peace treaty made Japan, technically, a sovereign nation once again. Immediately it was signed, the U.S. and Japan signed a military alliance which, according to The Associated Press (Sept. 9) gives the U.S. "the right to maintain its armed forces 'in and about' Japan indefinitely."
"Its practical effect is to make possible the retention of American forces in Japan after the peace treaty ends the present military occupation."
With the stroke of a gold fountain pen, Japan is transformed into an advanced American base dominating the coastline of China, Korea and the Soviet maritime provinces.
Premier Yoshida graciously signed a blank cheque for his American friends.
"The treaty (military alliance-R. G.) does not spell out all the
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details of where United States troops will be stationed, what bases they will retain, t>r what property will be occupied by the United States on what terms," reports The New York Times (Sept. 9).
"All these important factors," says The Times, "will be negotiated soon in the form of a separate administrative agreement, which will not, like the security pact and the Japanese peace treaty, require the ratification of the Senate." Or The Times might have added of the Japanese Diet.
U.S. News & World Report /Sept. 7), organ of American business, reveals the American-Japanese Government conspiracy to impose this new military agreement on the Japanese people.
The revelation is made in an interview with the magazine's Regional Editor, Joseph Fromm, during a visit home.
He reports "the Japanese are very concerned about the secrecy surrounding this military agreement, mainly because they would like to know what's going to be expected of them. No one in Japan, other than a few top officials, knows what the military agreement provides."
Q—You mean the Japanese Diet isn't familiar with it?
A—(It) hasn't been revealed to the Japanese people and will not be until it is signed, sealed and delivered. There is some question in Japan as to just how it is to be handled. Treaties are supposed to go to the Diet, just as they do here. But there are various devices for signing what is in effect a treaty, but under a different name, and thus not submitting it for approval.
The Times report of a separate administrative agreement exposes the neat trick evolved by Dean Acheson and Premier Yoshida to avoid having to take their treaty before the bar of public opinion in Japan, as well as in the United States.
All true democrats will recognize it at once as a priceless example of democracy in action. While underpaid Japanese workers are busily turning out cheap imitations of American sewing machines (See item 9>, their Premier does his part by engaging in a cheap imitation of Kansas City machine politics. Yet our press hails Yoshida as a democrat. Sewing machines are not the only thing coming out of Japan bearing a phoney label.
4. The Law Is Broken
Aspiring sincerely to international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever, renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation: i.e. the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes ... In order to accomplish the aims of the preceding paragraphs, land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.— The Japanese Constitution, Chapter II, Article 9.
The Japanese Constitution was unique in history; it contained a great hope not only for the people of Japan, but for peace-loving people everywhere. Under its post-war constitution, Japan became the first country in history to outlaw war.
Now, turn to the interview with Joseph Fromm in U.S. News:
Q—Under the treaty they can re-arm, can't they?
A—There's no restriction.
Q—Isn't there a constitutional restriction?
A—The Constitution would have to be changed.
On February 6, 1951, the Japanese women Members of Parliament sent a message to John Foster Dulles, the man who wrote the peace treaty and military alliance in which they opposed both.
"We hear some men, a rather large number of them, saying, 'As soon as the United States will supply us with munitions and equipment, we shall have the martial spirit to march to any corner of the world, especially Russia, with our vengeance. 'Wait ten years,' they say, 'and our factories will be strong enough to produce excellent munitions, as Germany did after her defeat in World War I. After all, that will be the best way to provide a profession for this ever-increasing population with so little land and resources.' "
This was the eloquent warning of the Japanese women to the man who insists the Japanese renounce their constitution and reinstate war as a noble pursuit for the sons of Japanese mothers.
"There are large numbers of Japanese men and women, well informed, who believe neither Communist China nor Russia will dare invade Japan as long as she keeps faithful to her Constitution and the Potsdam declaration," they pointed out.
Yoshishige Abe, President of Peers School and former Japanese Minister of Education, stated in the November 1951 Asahi Hyoron:
"We should not be ashamed'of our inability to fight, but on the contrary we should positively arouse the will not to fight. I am firmly convinced that Japan's freedom and independence cannot be found except through this course."
5. The Police Force
The basis for a new Japanese army already exists—the Japanese National Police Reserve, numbering 70,000 men.—The New York Times, Sept. 9, 1951.
Q—Isn't the police system organized on an army pattern? A— That's right. There are four divisions, 75,000 men officially—U.S. News &*World Report. Sept. 7, 1951.
The re-armament of Japan is not a matter of conjecture. It was already in process before the signing of the peace treaty and military alliance. The hard core of a Japanese army was maintained under the thin camouflage of a national police force. Trained, no doubt, to take part in such "police actions" as the devastation of Korea!
Hanson Baldwin, New York Times military commentator, wrote on Dec. 25, 1950: "The re-arming of Japan has started even while tb.p debate about its merits is still resounding in the foreign offices of the world. For this re-arming of Japan is the real meaning of the creation last summer (1950) by the Japanese Government under General Mac-Arthur's direction of a national police reserve in Japan."
The London News Chronicle reported (April 5, 1951) that this 'police force' is "armed with machine-guns, mortars and armoured cars."
In U.S. News Joseph Fromm doubts that Japan's economic system could bear the burden of a big army' but then he goes on to say, "The Finance Minister, with whom I discussed this, insists that Japan could support a national police reserve or a defensive corps of possibly 200,-000 men as far as its wages were concerned and perhaps clothing and food, but that it couldn't provide the equipment."
"I think," continues Fromm, "they foresee that the U.S. would arm any Japanese army and subsidize it to the extent of providing newer type arms and ammunition, and that they would support it from the point of view of administrative support."
Inasmuch as the American taxpayer is now subsidizing virtually every army in the non-Communist world the Japanese can surely expect to be treated equally as generously. All Mr. Dulles will demand in return is cannon fodder.
In anticipation, the Yoshida government on June 5 lifted all restrictions on the strength of the national police force. The Japanese navy is also to be rebuilt. At the beginning of 1951, the Japanese naval police had 300 vessels. The chief of Japan's Maritime Safety Board, Okubo, has recently announced that this number will be doubled.
(Continued Next Week)
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