JAPAN: The Comrade & the Geisha

For five years Japan's "Little Stalin" was a teak-jawed, cold-eyed ex-factory worker named Shigeo Shida. All other top Communists had fled to China after General MacArthur ordered a crackdown on Communists in 1950. Shida stayed, went underground and took over command by default. A hardened revolutionary with a taste for cold-blooded intrigue and a record of twelve years in prison, Shida built up a strong following among the younger, tougher comrades. He appointed himself chief of the party's "military committee," decreed a policy of unflinching violence. "We must always be prepared to give our lives for the party," he...

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