Only Natural

Ever since the early days of the occupation, Japan's press had been infested with Communists. Red-led unions, going far beyond the intent of U.S.-sponsored labor laws, had won contracts denying management the right to fire anyone for any reason without full union approval. Thus, by 1946, Reds had gained editorial control of Tokyo's major dailies. Although many of the Red leaders were finally ousted under the prodding of occupation authorities, many lesser Communists remained and management was powerless to do anything about them.

Last week management got a long-awaited break. The representatives of seven major dailies and of Japan's radio network were summoned by occupation authorities and given "strong recommendations on the duty of democratic newspapers." Within the next few days the exact nature of the "recommendations" became clear: 476 newsmen were fired on the charge that they were either active Communists or fellow travelers and "advocates of violence and subversion." Since the papers announced that the action "supersedes all domestic laws and labor agreements," there was no doubt that the ousters had been authorized by occupation officials.

From the discharged newspapermen came loud and immediate outcries. Setting up a "League Against the Suppression of Freedom of Speech," they posted themselves on street corners, harangued former co-workers for their support. Said one discharged reporter: "It's all right to purge me [because] I'm a fellow traveller . . . But there are many unjustly accused."

Some Japanese liberals feared that a dangerous precedent had been set, and wondered how the power of mass dismissal on ideological grounds might be used once the occupation had ended. But among the Japanese newspapermen the appeals of the discharged Communists met with little success, and few believed the Communist assertion that innocent people had been fired. Said balding, stocky Shoji Yasuda, managing editor of Tokyo's Yomiuri: "These people have been under surveillance for a long time and there's no mistake." The general public, conditioned by the Korean war and previous occupation directives against Japan's Communists (TIME, June 19), took the news with a shrugging "Tozen da [It's only natural]."

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