50th Anniversary Issue — October 1, 1995

By Jim Shaw

If you could somehow choose to be a spectator at a fascinating chapter out of the history of the past hundred year -- in other words, time travel -- what time and place would you choose?

For me, it would be Japan in the post-war era, and I got my wish.

When I arrived at Stripes in 1959, momentous changes were taking place in Japan. Fifteen years earlier, the country had been defeated in a devastating war.

Military occupation of the country had ended in 1952, but there were still many thousands of Americans stationed at bases throughout the country.

The Japanese and Americans were warily trying to figure each other out. And, meanwhile, a mighty national effort was under way to rebuild, ultimately producing what would rightly be called an "economic miracle.''

So, I was there, all right, and I wish I could say that I saw the "big picture" taking shape. But in truth what I remember is mostly everyday trivia of the period.

By the late 1950s few visible scars remained from the heavy damage inflicted on Tokyo by the World War II bombing raids, but the drab, gray city didn't seem much like a world capital, either. It was a bit threadbare.

A decent hamburger was very hard to come by "on the economy,'' but there were outstanding restaurants where you could enjoy a first-rate steak dinner for $5 to $10 at the then-prevailing exchange rate of 360 yen to a dollar. (The military clubs were even cheaper, serving 16-ounce Kobe beef steaks with all the trimmings for $2 or less. At "dime time,'' you could order any drink at the bar for 10 cents.)

But the Japanese still had their belts pulled tight, and luxuries were scarce. Few Japanese could afford to own cars, and they were naturally a little envious of Americans, who, for the most part, drove ancient, scruffy clunkers that had been passed down through a succession of owners. We bought PX gasoline for about 20 cents a gallon.

There were still street signs in English, left over from Occupation days -- A Avenue, H Avenue, 40th Street, etc. But finding one's way through Tokyo's narrow, twisting streets could still be a nightmare. Or sometimes it was just more fun to get lost and see what happened.

For those of weak will, there was temptation at every turn.

There was a total of just one hour of English-language TV per week in Tokyo in the early '60s. One of the stations showed the excellent American series, "The Defenders.''

As for the work of a reporter, I have memories of long periods of time spent dialing numbers that never responded.

To this day my right index finger is a half-inch shorter than the left one, the result of trying to reach numbers at various military bases around Japan--Sendai, Camp Drake, Tokorozawa, Itazuke -- or, even more challenging, in distant Korea, Taiwan, Okinawa, the Philippines. The procedure we reporters used was to just dial the number over and over and over as if, by sheer force of will, you could force a connection. Sometimes you'd make it on the 20th or 30th attempt. Sometimes not.

I still have vivid memories of covering the one event that turned out to be more dramatic than anyone expected: the airport arrival of White House press secretary James Hagerty in Tokyo in June, 1960. That doesn't sound like a big deal.

Airport arrival stories are usually boring, well-scripted events that involve handshakes and bland statements and not much more. But Hagerty was the advance man -- the point man, actually -- for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was then making a tour of several Asian countries.

Ike was scheduled to conclude his tour with a visit to Japan, where, at that time, delicate negotiations were taking place concerning renewal of the security treaty under which the United States guaranteed to defend Japan against attack.

But there was a lot of opposition to renewal of the treaty, and many Japanese resented the presence of large numbers of Americans on their soil, defenders or not.

Japanese leftists seized on this issue as a mainstay of their campaign to unseat the government and organized massive demonstrations in major cities and around U.S. bases. The closer Ike got to Japan, the bigger the demonstrations, some of them involving several hundred thousand marchers. To send a message to Eisenhower, the leftists dispatched thousands of demonstrators to meet Hagerty's plane when it landed at Tokyo's Haneda Airport.

Things went quietly enough at planeside -- where pro-American demonstrators greatly outnumbered the leftists -- but when Hagerty and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Douglas MacArthur II left the airport, their limousine was blocked and surrounded by screaming demonstrators. While Hagerty and MacArthur remained inside, outwardly calm, smoking cigarettes, the demonstrators rocked the car, bashed it with placards and hurled rocks. Several even jumped on the roof.

At that point, a U.S. helicopter moved in to rescue the car's occupants. It was a moment when a disaster was just waiting to happen. The chopper had to maneuver in close to the embassy car, and there was no telling what the mob's reaction would be. A well-placed placard hitting the helicopter's rotor might even have brought it spinning down into the mob.

But the rescue went off smoothly, without bloodshed, and the officials were whisked off to downtown Tokyo.

Stripes put out an ``extra'' edition. Ike canceled his visit to Japan.