On to Tokyo

Dwight Eisenhower said his farewells briskly to the U.S. officials and foreign diplomats who clustered around the ramp at Maryland's Andrews Air Force Base. After 7 1/2 years and 95,000 miles of presidential diplomacy, his leave-takings had become fairly routine. But this time the atmosphere crackled with a historic difference: the President of the U.S. was off on a two-week swing through the Far East with Japan a major stop, and howling, Red-led Japanese mobs were threatening bodily harm if he did not cancel his visit.

The threats were made grimly explicit earlier in the week when thousands of Japanese leftists, singing the Internationale and responding on cue to the orders of their leaders, mobbed Ike's advance men, Press Secretary James Hagerty and White House Appointments Secretary Thomas Stephens, as they tried to drive to the city from Tokyo's International Airport with U.S. Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II (see FOREIGN NEWS). Tokyo's police chief flatly announced that he could not "guarantee Eisenhower's safety" when the President arrives next Sunday.

First Leg. "As you know," said the President in a brief statement before takeoff, "there have been public warnings that I should not visit the Far East at this time." Nevertheless, he felt a "compelling responsibility . . . within the American mission of free-world leadership . . . neither to postpone nor to cancel my visit ... If the trip now ahead of me were concerned principally with the support of a regime or a treaty or a disputed policy, if it were intended merely to bolster a particular program, or to achieve a limited objective, such a journey would have no real justification. But this trip . . . represents an important phase of a program whose paramount objective was, and is, to improve the climate of international understanding . . . We should not permit unpleasant incidents and sporadic turmoil, inspired by misled or hostile agents, to dim for us the concrete and gratifying results."

Twelve minutes ahead of schedule, the President, his son, Lieut. Colonel John Eisenhower, and John's wife Barbara climbed aboard the sleek orange-and-silver jet. With a final wave, Ike was off for the first leg of his 22,795-mile trip, to Anchorage, Alaska. Seven and a half hours later, he touched down in Anchorage to a welcome by Governor William Egan.

Then he hustled off with Press Secretary Hagerty, who had flown in from Tokyo, for a lengthy conference.

Second Thought. All week long the State Department had pondered the wisdom of Ike's going to Japan. Coincidentally, the President's three-day visit will begin on the day the new U.S.-Japanese mutual-defense treaty becomes effective. In recent months, Communist-directed leftists have launched a frenzied drive to topple Premier Nobusuke Kishi's government and torpedo the treaty. To retreat before the agitation of a Communist-led minority would be certain to weaken pro-U.S. forces in Asia, perhaps bring the downfall of the Kishi government and the treaty too.

Ambassador MacArthur strongly urged that Ike's date be kept. The State Department's Far Eastern experts predicted that the rough treatment of Hagerty would rally pro-Western Japanese and shame the police into more effective action against the rioters. They also pinned hopes on the traditional--if waning--Japanese respect for Emperor Hirohito, who will meet the President at the airport and accompany him on the ten-mile drive to town. Canceled was Ike's round of golf with Kishi, but he still planned to give his scheduled speech to the Diet.

Old Hand. Overshadowed by the troubles in Japan were the prospects of memorable welcomes at the President's other major Asian stops:

THE PHILIPPINES (three days). "We launched our first major program to help a developing people achieve a prosperous independence in the Philippines," said the President in his take-off speech. Notified only two weeks ago that Manila would be added to Ike's schedule, the city has feverishly refurbished the presidential palace as the President's headquarters, erected a bamboo arch and "Mabuhay Ike" banner, and planned a crowded schedule of ceremonial wreath-layings, speeches and state dinners in the sweltering heat. More important, Ike will get the word that the Philippine government has been taking strong steps to clean up its notoriously graft-ridden politics (see FOREIGN NEWS). Ike is an old Philippine hand: as a young major he served from 1935 to 1939 as General Douglas MacArthur's assistant military adviser in Manila, won the admiration of Commonwealth President Manuel Quezon for his hard work and ability to lose diplomatically at poker ses sions aboard the presidential yacht.

FORMOSA (one day). "With the Republic of China," said Eisenhower in his speech, "we have helped demonstrate to the world that a free people can hold high its precious national heritage against all efforts to destroy it." Aboard the cruiser St. Paul, Ike will go from Manila to For mosa for an overnight stay in Taipei as the guest of Nationalist China's Generalis simo Chiang Kaishek. Ike will report to Chiang on the summit blowup, go the course in speechmaking and wreath-laying. During his visit, state-owned rail ways will let passengers ride free to Taipei from any place on the island. Against a likely background of Communist shelling of the offshore islands, the Nationalists may press the President for long-range guarantees of Formosa's position in U.S. defense plans.

KOREA (eight hours). "This republic," said the President, is "a bulwark on the frontier of the free world." Ike will ad dress the National Assembly and confer with Acting Chief of State Huh Chung during a fast-paced day. Doubling back to Japan the same night, he will stop long enough to change planes, then head east on a nightlong flight across the Pacific to Hawaii, an enormous aloha and several days of rest in the sunshine.

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