JAPANESE REDS AROUSE LABOR, PLAN FALL COUP
NAOI, TAKEO
Japanese Reds Arouse Labor, Plan Fall Coup By TAKEO NAOI New Leader Correspondent in Japan TOKYO. JAPAN'S UNRELENTING LABOR STRIFE may be the prelude to a full-scale communist attempt at...
...On June 17, its members were ordered "to strengthen the united struggle locally and unite all efforts toward overthrowing the Yoshida Government as well as the local authorities...
...And a group of repatriates published the following statement in the July 3 issue of Red Flag: "We 2OSS veterans, bursting with vitality and the ever-radiant inspiration of Soviet truth, have come home full of fighting spirit as the shock troops of the democratization of our Japanese fatherland...
...The strikes on the municipal and sober ben transportation systems and the straggle in Hiroshima beef witness to the degree to which the Japanese messes have become radicalised and polificalized...
...At a result of the proposed reorganization, however, 210,000 displaced government employees, 500.000 displaced industrial workert, and 500.000-700.000 repatriates and othert will lose thehjobs in the meantime, raiting the total number of unemployed to 1.21.4 million...
...India, Indonesia, Korea and the Philippines are just beginning to solve the knotty problems of independence...
...But in American-occupied Japan, any such proposal is invariably voted down, as it was by the early summer conventions of the railroad, electrical, and communications unions...
...The second big union in Japan is the Communications Workers...
...On June 18, Communist SecretaryGeneral Kyuichi Tokuda could confidently assure his Central Committee: "The situation at home and abroad is extremely favorable for the Communist party and indicatei that the revolution it approaching...
...This program was, to put it bluntly, a policy of retrenchment: its aim is to stop government subsidies to business, tighten^bank credit, reorganize personnel in government and industry, and reestablish the economy on a sound basis...
...Thus much of their rancor is directed against tne Nine-Point Program outlined by GenYral McArthur last December...
...Under such conditions, unless we make a revolution, we shall not progress one step...
...This year's budget was designed to implement the Nine-Point Program...
...We would suggest the Administration get busy, lest Mr...
...A good index of communist strength in a nation's labor movement is the unions' attitude toward the Cominformdirected World Federation of Trade Unions...
...An investigation by the Government Statistics Bureau revealed that the number of unemployed in March was 380,000...
...Where General Marshall's Harvard suggestion was followed by the ERP, President Quirino's clarion call met with well-mannered silence...
...X"kuda went on to predict that by September...
...In short, the entire Far East is in a revolutionary turmoil, and in such a situation, quick, decisive action—not professions of sympathy—is what counts...
...THE COMMUNISTS BANK on thi¦«¦«• factors: (1) control of the labor movement, (2) the tough young repatriates whom Russia sent back from her PW camps as professional revolutionists, and (3) the economic crisis...
...In Hiroshima and Yokohama, v/orkers occupied shut-down plants, clashed with policemen, stormed police stations...
...JAPAN'S UNRELENTING LABOR STRIFE may be the prelude to a full-scale communist attempt at revolution this fall...
...Unless a drastic reorganization of personnel is effected, the Japaneseeconomy cannot escape further inflation or be reconstructed on a sound basis...
...It is clear from this that the Soviet Union will send tyack more welltrained "reinforcements" as Japan's struggle gets hotter...
...ready to act on its new slogan, "From Popular Struggle to Power Struggle...
...This summer will see the Yoshida Government's first crisis...
...During the recent railway strike, hundreds of railway workers armed with kniv.'s stormed the meetings of anti-strike locals, threatening the members with cries of "Kill them all...
...Inflationary -prices have not come down yet...
...For, as Takeo Naoi points out, even Japan, our supposed bastion in the Pacific, is now imperiled...
...When 600 of them arrived at Tokyo Station from Maizuru on July 2, they by-passed the school-children and welcoming committees and went immediately to march in a Communistprepared demonstration...
...But the State Department has always treated him like the bad son off in boarding school, and last week a Senate motion to consult him on the Far East crisis passed by a single vote...
...Watchful waiting" did nothing to prevent Pearl Harbor...
...This became clear as early as June, when a wild-cat strike of the streetcar and suburban transit systems threw Tokyo into complete confusion...
...Throughout Europe, trade unions are gradually breaking away from the WFTU...
...These are the official pronouncements as Japan's Communist party shifts from "popular struggle" to "power struggle...
...All over Japan, there have been rmall-scwle rehearsals of the insurrection...
...When there are arrests, the communists arc strong enough in some t.reas to force the police to release the i'rlsoners...
...anti-Communist demagogues, to plunge into the millionstrong ranks of (he Japanese Communist party, and to wage an unflinching struggle for oar national independence...
...Hundreds or thousands of workers have staged two and three day sit-down strikes in factories, or else broken into local legislative buildings and refused to budge...
...With unions coming under increasing communist domination, with a new Red elite guard of repatriated war prisoners, and with unemployment and inflation rising, the Japanese Communist party i...
...He got little more than a pat on the head for his suggestion...
...This summer's labor crises are the artillery salvos before the hard-bitten infantry of Red Revolution go on the march...
...AN EXPECTED ECONOMIC CRISIS will bring the situation to the boiling I>oint, the Communists believe...
...But such a policy—currently bein^ followed by this government in the Far East—could be fatal for tjpe United States in the age of the Atom Bomb and the Trojan Horse...
...Is this American world leadership or ward politics...
...It is said that there's no use weeping about the recent State Department White Paper on China, because it's all spilt milk...
...Our fellow-countrymen in the Soviet Union, full of martial vigor to the bursting-point, are training themselves for the day on which they are to sail bacht a million strong, iteross the great sea...
...And Secretary-General Tokuda made it even clearer: "The workers' struggle has already assumed a form different from those of the past...
...Commented Communist chief Sanzo Nazoka: "Between this summer's matt struggle and those of former timet there will be a fundamental and essential difference...
...Two weeks ago, President Quirino of the Philippines, urged the free nations of Asia to unite, so as to keep free...
...But unless linn matter is carefully handled, Nozaka's prediction that this summer would bring the Yoshidn government its fir^t big crisis may come true...
...Internal struggles ravage Indo-China and Burma...
...But the party platform is expressed as easily with daggers as with documents...
...his administration of the Japanese occupation has been a singular success...
...President Truman proposed the development of backward areas by U.S...
...And by June it had already resolved to "fight as an organization with every forceful means r.t its disposal, including strikes...
...But at the tame time unemployment, decreased production, decreased turnover of merchandise, and other deflationary tendencies are to be expected...
...it has already demonstrated its political character, pointing toward revolution...
...General MacArthur, whether you like his photograph or not, has devoted a lifetime to American interests in the Pacific...
...Put as a result of the policy of retrenchment, the banknotes issued by the Bank of Japan have fallen from 350 lillion to 300 billion yen, and there are sdready complaints of a shortage of capital...
...capital in his inaugural address in January...
...Communist power in these key unions is being extended...
...The government plans to ask for nn increased appropriation at the Emergency session to be held in the early fall...
...Labor strife is reaching a dangerous boiling point in Japan...
...Acheson has to prepare White Papers for all the free nations of Asia...
...For example, among the railway workers—Japan's largest and most powerful union—a member of the Democratic League terves as Central Committee chairman, but the vice-chairman, secretary-general and other key administrative officers are Communists...
...An Editorial— The Far East Crisis " r ATCHFUL WAITING" was a good enough foreign policy in the \\ days when the worst thing a country could do was seize an American oil-well or two...
...At the Red Vanguard of the international proletariat, which unites within itself both the Soviet Union and Japan, we pledge ourselves to annihilate antiSoviet and...
...and "If you don't vote for the r.trike, nobody will leave this room alive...
...And the NCIO—the national council of the industrial unions—resolved a few day* later "tb (ostev a unite*, natioriwide struggle in conjunction not only with a particular industry, but with all Industrial workers, farmers and citiyens concerned, and thereby to carry on a political struggle with a broad base...
...e e e THE KRONSTADT BAILORS, the I elfish guards of the Japanese revolution, will be the prisoners of war recently returned from Siberia, whose Careful indoctrination has already been described here (The New Leader, July 16...
...To prepare for the threat of deflation before the threat of inflation is removed—is what the CP means by a "revolutionary situation...
...China has been tossed away as a "complete failure...
...fee Yoshida Government v ould collapse and a "people's coalition government" would be set up...
...Taking care of more than a million unemployed, will require an appropriation of about 800 million yen...
...Yet Congress, so busy cutting vital appropriations to Europe, has done next to nothing about the crucial Point Four program...
Vol. 32 • August 1949 • No. 34
