Kudos for Kishi

Fifty-seven hours after he flew in for "frank and friendly'' discussions with President Eisenhower on U.S.-Japanese relations, Japan's new Conservative Premier Nobusuke Kishi had won his country's greatest postwar victory. It consisted of a set of fundamental changes in Washington's Japan policy that will go far toward establishing his fully sovereign and renascent country as the U.S.'s coequal partner in the Far East. In a joint communique issued by the President and the Premier after their talks and from less official leakage, it was plain that Kishi had come, seen and got:

P: U.S. agreement to make sharp cutbacks within the next year in the 100,000 U.S. servicemen now stationed in Japan, including a "prompt withdrawal of all U.S. ground combat forces," i.e., about 30,000 men of the Army. The 1st Cavalry Division, biggest U.S. combat group in the home islands, will pull out this summer. Probable destination: Korea. As Japan's new, 200,000-man defense force grows, Washington plans to make further reductions in the remaining 70,000-man U.S. force--for the most part Air Force and Navy personnel.

P: U.S. acknowledgment that Japan, which "must trade to live." is free to follow Britain's example and increase the level of its nonstrategic trade with Red China. Stressed Kishi: his government intends to export no strategic goods to China nor will it recognize the Peking regime.

P: U.S. aid to help Japan correct its present foreign-exchange shortage, increase its cotton purchases, etc. Under study: about $500 million in loans, other forms of assistance.

P:Careful U.S. study of Kishi's plan for a U.S.-financed Southeast Asia Development Fund, which would draw its raw materials from the free Asian countries and its technicians and capital goods from Japan--a project which would make Japan the political and economic leader of free Asia.

P: U.S. reassurances that Japan maintains "residual sovereignty" over the American-occupied Bonin and Ryukyus Islands, including Okinawa; i.e., it will eventually get them back, but not until conditions "of threat and tension" abate in the Far East.

In the three jampacked days that preceded the announcement of the big change in U.S.-Japanese relations, Kishi racked up many a personal and diplomatic kudos for himself. Ike and Kishi lunched informally at the White House soon after the Premier's arrival, then drove out to Burning Tree, where Ike presented his golfing guest with a personally ordered, matched set of Ben Hogan irons and woods. Inscribed in gold on the leather bag: "To Prime Minister Kishi from President Eisenhower." At the first tee, understandably nervous with his new bag of sticks, the diminutive (5 ft. 4 in.) Premier sliced a drive into the rough, was visibly encouraged when Ike shouted "Mo ichido" (in Japanese, take another), responded with a drive of about 150 yards down the middle.

At week's end, after jubilantly telling newsmen that he had "completely achieved" his hope of establishing a "true and strong partnership" with the U.S., Kishi flew off to New York and new worlds to conquer. There, among other things this week, he planned to consult with John D. Rockefeller III. other U.S. businessmen, perhaps put in a good word or two about the advantages of wider U.S.-Japanese trade.

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