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The Activist. A lifelong sportsman with a sportsman's love of bold action. Douglas MacArthur II fortnight ago decided to try to bring Presidential Press Secretary James Hagerty into Tokyo by car instead of in the helicopter that stood ready at the international airport. MacArthur's explanation: As a test for Ike, "we had to find out just how far the mob would go." They found out when Zengakuren students mobbed MacArthur's limousine, tore off the American flag and forced Hagerty & Co. to retreat to the helicopter (TIME, June 20).
Even after that attack, MacArthur continued to recommend that Ike go ahead with the Tokyo visit unless the Japanese government itself asked him to stay away. But with the pointed firmness that has led one colleague to dub him "the man with the most leg drive in the Foreign Service," MacArthur also pressed Kishi's government for details of the security measures planned for Ike's arrival. When he learned that Kishi's chief security scheme was to organize pro-government demonstrations to counter the leftists, MacArthur cabled Washington that he could no longer hold to his recommendation that Ike come.
As MacArthur had clearly recognized from the start, more was involved in the struggle raging inside Japan than the possibility of mob action against Ike. At bottom, what was at stake was the U.S.'s long range interest in Japan. For in a classic sample of Communist strategy, all the trappings of democracy in Japan—a strong labor movement, a free press, an expanded educational system—were being employed to undermine the foundations of democratic government.
A Legacy from Uncle. No one is more aware than Douglas MacArthur II of the ironic fact that the weapons which the Communists are exploiting in Japan are in large part a legacy from the man he invariably calls "my uncle." When he landed at Atsugi Airport in August 1945, General MacArthur's task was to endow Japan with democratic institutions which would temper the physical power the Japanese had acquired by forced draft in the 90 years since Commodore Perry had forced them to abandon two centuries of hermithood. Through the sprawling military supergovernment known as SCAP (Supreme Commander Allied Powers), General MacArthur performed much of his mission brilliantly.
In a constitution written by SCAP's Government Section, the general gave the Japanese the liberties that some of them now seem bent on throwing away—free speech, universal suffrage, an independent judiciary. In 1949, Detroit Banker Joseph Dodge, MacArthur's tough-minded economic adviser, forced upon the reluctant Japanese a stiff dose of deflation and decontrol—and thereby laid the foundations of Japan's present economic strength. No less vital was the land-reform program which, by redistributing 4,500,000 acres of land and cutting tenant farmers from 48% of the agricultural population to only 9%, gave Japan a contented rural population that has been the mainstay of its conservative-minded governments ever since.