Admirals Forgiven

It was Captain (later Rear Admiral) Hideo Hiraide who broke the news to the Japanese people on Dec. 7, 1941: "In the early morning, units of the imperial navy launched an attack on Pearl Harbor ... Two battleships sunk, four severely damaged . . ." Last week Admiral Hiraide and 451 others, put on a war-criminal purge list in 1946 by General Douglas MacArthur, were de-purged by the Japanese government. Admiral Hiraide died in 1948, but his de-purging is more than a posthumous attempt to blot out the stain on the family escutcheon. Under the original stiff occupation rules, purged men and their direct descendants down to the third generation were to be barred from taking any part in politics. Still on the purge list: 11,800 Japanese, including 5,000 dead.

Another Japanese admiral turned up in the news last week, and offered more spectacular proof of changing times. Kichisaburo Nomura, Japan's special "peace envoy" in Washington on Pearl Harbor Day, showed up at the U.S. naval base at Yokosuka to attend a ceremony aboard the battleship Wisconsin. He came to see his old friend, Vice Admiral Robert P. Briscoe, take over command of the U.S. Seventh Fleet from Vice Admiral Harold M. Martin. Said Nomura, who is still on the purge list: "I have always admired the American Navy. It was wonderful talking to old friends about old times." He and friends had a chance to talk about new times too. With Japan's peace treaty soon to come into effect, Western military men have been studying Nomura's blueprint for a rearmed Japan: an army of 225,000; an air force of 1,800 planes; a 387,000-ton navy, including four baby flattops.

Japan's bestselling phonograph record in 1951, Tokyo reported last week, was the Warship March of the old imperial navy:--recorded with the brasses muffled and the drums replaced by tambourines and castanets.

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