Salient: Victoria University Students' Newspaper. Vol. 24, No. 9. 1961

Part Three

Part Three

A young democracy in Japan has bred a vicious form of militant trade unionism. This militant marxist leadership is reflected also in the organisation of Zengakuren, the Students Association, yet both the rank-and-file worker and the average student show themselves to be not necessarily in full support of the activities of their radical leaders. This lack of support can be proved statistically, but to a foreigner this statistical proof seems valueless when compared with the massive rioting mobs of red-flag-waving students. In New Zealand we can only go by the newspaper reports and press photos that we saw. These on-the-spot reports, presented starkly before us with no background information, only lead us up the garden path—the very garden path the Communist organisers wanted the West to be led up.

Ignoring the basic rights or wrongs of the U.S. — Japan Security Treaty, Prime Minister Kishi was, beyond doubt, pushing the ratificaton of it through the Diet in a most disorderly and undemocratic manner. Kishi blamed the shambles on to the Communist International, and there is little doubt that this organisation did bring pressure to bear to stop the treaty going through. The Soviet Union in an obvious endeavour to enforce the removal of U.S. military bases from Japan, made the most of the case of an American U2 aircraft shot down over Soviet territory. In a memorandum to the Japanese Government, the Soviet threatened that a ratification of a treaty allowing American bases on Japanese soil would result only in an I.C.B.M.—Moscow-Tokyo Nonstop! Communist China (who commands a great deal of attention in the Japanese papers) also launched an attack, theirs being against Kishi personally. Morally and materially boosted, Sohyo and the Social-Democratic Party organised the National Council for Joint Struggle against the Security Treaty. The Communist Party sat at the table of the Council as an "advisor."