Correspondents' Correspondence

...Coming from an older person the remark would not have been surprising, for the Japanese have traditionally been sensitive about their relation to outsiders...

...I thought they'd bring something special for Expo, something we couldn't see except by going to the foreign country...

...At the time, he discussed his desire for a Cabinet of superior, independent administrators who would be given wide latitude in management and policy...

...I am stunned by all this...

...And these will remain murky at best until the reorganization of the Budget Bureau and the White House domestic staff is completed next month...

...Although the feeling of being pushed through the eye of a needle is by no means new to most Japanese, the crush of visitors in every area of the fair grounds was far more irritating than the everyday hordes in the urban streets and subways...

...The general disappointment with the quality of the exhibits was sharpened by the fact that where there was something worth viewing, people had to wait in line for hours only to be rapidly jostled past the displays...

...Eliahu Salpeter Meet Me in Osaka Osaka—The predominant Japanese reaction to Expo '70 seems to be "taishita koto nai"—nothing great...

...They all use flashing lights and lots of photos," said a housewife from Tokyo, "but what is that...

...Now, however, apparently frustrated by the unwieldiness of the machinery over which he presides, and by the limitations of some of the officials he appointed, Nixon has decided to try concentrating an unprecedented amount of responsibility in the already overburdened White House...

...Two hours afterward, a building where school lunches are prepared and served was struck by another rocket, and again the toll was one girl dead and three children wounded...

...In a similar vein, a Japanese writer observed at the Expo opening last March 15: "We are too confident of ourselves...

...One example of the distinction observers on Capitol Hill are drawing between short-range personnel problems and long-term institutional issues concerns Robert P. Mayo, the Budget Bureau chief who will lose all command responsibilities when he becomes a White House aide July 1. His fate was apparently sealed by his reported inability to get along with John D. Ehrlichman, Nixon's counsel in charge of coordinating domestic programs, who some people have found even more inaccessible than the President himself...

...We saved for half a year to make this trip," said a farmer wearing a cap imprinted with the Expo motto...

...The White House, Nixon continued, cannot do everything—a pointed criticism of Lyndon Johnson's well-known penchant for personally controlling the entire government apparatus...

...Perhaps the great irony of Expo is that the Japanese, a people thought by much of the world to be "economic animals," are curiously unmoved by all the displays of technical and economic self-congratulation...

...Perhaps in 1972 the Democratic Presidential candidate will give a noteworthy speech urging more responsibility and independence for the Cabinet.—Walter R. Gordon Terrorist Plans Tel Aviv—People here often remark that the Arabs have never quite learned what makes the Israelis tick...

...I don't know what to think...

...In the absence of humanity at Expo, the Japanese are left with "things" that are cold and often confusing, especially to the elderly and rural visitors...

...One must fully appreciate this fact to comprehend the degree of anguish and anger the recent terrorist attacks on schools and schoolchildren have evoked...

...The most shocking of these was the point-blank bazooka assault last month on a yellow school bus making its regular morning rounds from the village of Avivim on the Lebanese border to a school in a nearby settlement...

...We can see all this in books," commented a high-school boy from Osaka...

...and to goad Israel into a massive retaliatory action directed against Lebanon, the country from which the attacks were launched...

...This is just a huge advertisement for big business," said a student from Kobe...

...Are they kidding us...

...This may well explain why so many Japanese leave the fair unsatisfied...

...But aside from the American Apollo exhibit there was nothing new...

...In the past the Budget Bureau, while officially in charge of allocating funds, has informally controlled the flow of money to agencies and departments even after the budgeting has been completed and appropriations made...

...Curiously, though, this month's potentially drastic changes go against a philosophy Nixon has enunciated on several occasions, most notably in a remarkable speech near the end of the 1968 Presidential campaign...

...They apparently realize, for example, that Israeli society—being composed in good part of people who emigrated here determined that their children would not suffer the daily indignities and threats Jews experienced elsewhere—is even more child-oriented than Jewish communities in other countries...

...Michael Berger...

...As I fought my way into the subway for the ride home, an old lady flopped down beside me...

...one girl was killed and three other children wounded...

...Another, more peculiarly Japanese form of irritation was also expressed: "I think these foreign countries look down on Japan...

...But the more important fact is that his replacement, Labor Secretary George P. Shultz, will be heading a revamped budget bureau that may well produce a permanent and basic alteration in the way the government does its business...

...we are taking photos of hostesses instead...

...22 children were wounded...

...My friends and I have stopped looking at the pavilions...

...Shuffle Washington—Whatever the specifics of the current hirings and firings at the White House, their real significance lies not so much in personalities as in procedural alterations...

...There is no humanity...

...Now this second practice will be legitimized...

...We have better photo exhibits in our department stores...

...that's why they didn't bother to bring anything interesting...

...The best thing about the French pavilion was the escalator ride to the top...

...Most pavilions, in fact, contain very little of anything, old or new...

...The omb's increased authority and its move into the White House, together with the creation of a Domestic Council and an Office of Executive Management, may be viewed by future historians as the most momentous change in the government's structure since the foreign policy revamping of more than two decades ago...

...Nine children, three teachers and the driver were killed...

...If anybody needed additional evidence that the choice of children as targets was deliberate terrorist policy, it came early this month in two separate attacks on the immigrant town of Beit Shan...

...An island people, they remain most inquisitive about other peoples...

...Since Lebanon maintains the most cordial relations with the West of all the Arab nations, the terrorist projection is obviously that their murders of Israeli schoolchildren will work to incur the wrath of Washington, London and Paris upon Jerusalem...

...One can see the bewilderment in the faces of the rural people on holiday as they wander about, trying to detect some meaning in the stream of bright, unfamiliar colors, the grotesquely shaped buildings, and the electronic gimmickry of most exhibits...

...In addition, last year the President made Peter Drucker's The Age of Discontinuity virtually mandatory reading throughout the upper echelons of his Administration, partly because the book presented the same thesis...

...But now it seems that the Arab terrorists at least have some clue—and they are applying their newfound knowledge with particular brutality...

...Moreover, Shultz' agency, under the new rubric of Office of Management and Budget (omb), will be responsible for the supervision of domestic, and possibly foreign, programs...

...There is no true picture here of the Japanese people —only of our economic power...

...Finding a seat on the train...

...It was the same with nearly every pavilion...

...It came, however, from a junior-high-school boy—an indication of the depth and endurance of Japanese suspicion and paranoia...

...Only a few days before, in the town of Kiryat Shmone, "Katyusha" rockets fired from Lebanon cut down a janitor and his daughter as they were running to open the school air-raid shelter...

...Judging correctly that such aggression would be far less tolerable to the Israelis than any other type of terrorist activity, the Arabs seem to have a double purpose: to scare some of the border residents into fleeing their homes...

...Out of the profusion of wartime operations were created the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Intelligence Board, and the National Security Council...

...This," she said, "was the best part of Expo...

...In the course of four days at Expo interviewing Japanese visitors, from bewildered country folk to bright young children, the responses were remarkably similar: More had been expected from Asia's first world's fair—with its ambitious theme, "Progress and Harmony for Mankind"—than neon lights and souvenir vendors...

...I kept saying to myself, 'Surely there must be something interesting.' Then, suddenly, I was outside again...

...First a prefabricated classroom building was hit by a rocket, setting it afire...