What About Japan?

Just when everybody had his mind on Korea, Russia brought into the open another touchy subject: the future of Japan. Moscow papers one day last week published the details of what the U.S. had privately proposed, and with it Russia's determined objections, which for once were moderately stated.

The U.S. knew that it could not occupy Japan indefinitely; it was eager to "bring back Japan as an equal in the society of free peoples." And incidentally it hoped to build Japan into a strong ally of the West in the fight against Communism. It proposed a vetoless peace conference of the 13 Allies who fought in the Pacific war; if Russia didn't like that procedure, "any or all nations at war with Japan which are willing to make peace" would go on without her. The U.S. also suggested that:

P: The U.S. get a U.N. trusteeship over the Japanese Ryukyu and Bonin Islands (including Okinawa).

P: The Yalta agreement giving the Kurils and southern Sakhalin Island to Russia (which now occupies them) be supplanted by a new four-power agreement disposing of the territories. If the U.S., Britain,

Russia and China could not agree within a year--the U.S. assumed they would not--the U.N. General Assembly would make the decision. Similarly, if these four nations could not agree on what to do about Formosa and Formosa's best-known inhabitant, Chiang Kaishek, that too would be put up to the veto-free U.N. General Assembly.

P: The U.S. "and perhaps other forces" should be responsible for helping the Japanese protect themselves and to bolster peace and security in that part of the world.

The U.S. plan was primarily the work of lanky John Foster Dulles, whose eight months as Republican adviser to the State Department have been spent in largely piecing together and reconciling the views of MacArthur in Tokyo with those of diplomatic and military men in Washington. A draft was submitted to the dozen other Pacific Allies in World War II; Dulles personally handed Russia's copy to Soviet Delegate Jacob A. Malik in New York City last month. Not until last week did Moscow's reply arrive. In diplomatic routine, it was simply a memorandum which, like the original U.S. proposals, did not commit anyone to anything. Sample of its tone: "An explanation is desired as to whether . . . the possibility exists of concluding a separate peace with Japan with only a few of the powers participating." (The answer, the U.S. had already said, was yes.)

In diplomatically correct fashion, the Russians went on to insist that the Kurils and southern Sakhalin became theirs at Yalta; that the Cairo agreement of 1943 gave Formosa to China (Russia contends that now means Communist China); and that at Potsdam it was decided that no "occupation troops" could be left in Japan once the peace terms were fulfilled.

Russia, of course, was hardly in a strong position to argue about honoring the covenants of Yalta, Cairo and Potsdam-- where, among other things, Russia had promised free elections in a free Poland. This week U.S. diplomats were drafting a polite reply to Russia's polite arguments.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.