pacifists, femintats, and professional anti-Americans while by
no means domant his been strengthened.
Doubts regarding the
wisdom and feastbitaity of Japanese rearmament fn &@ nuclear
age have increased. It may be coinctdent but NSA enlistment
rates are reported sharply down throughout the country,
Elements,
in both Conservative and Socialist circles, working for some
kind of accommodation with Red China have increased thetr actlevities, and government quarters cannot be unmindful of this,
Furthermore, press has t.-in to call on the government to cxact
guarantces from the US the; Japan will never t2 used as a bage
for launching atomic war a‘ainst Asian neighbd.:3s,
A senior
Foreign Office official in answer to questions from an Indepene-
dent membsr told the D1
i anmmittce May 12 that the US could
pring muctcar woapons iito ipan without informing the Jz panes
‘overnment and acknowledged what “since there 1s no mutual
security system thers is fear we will not be consulted when
atomte and hydrogen bombs are used."
This agitation may well
continue and expind, and it will strengthen the latent destre
for carly revision of the security treaty including some form
of nucicar understanding. Beyond this point much will depend
_
on how quickly and gattsfactorily we can settle specific issues
in the FUKURYU MURUMcase, Here the nub of the problem is settlenent claims; on this we still await Japanese response to our
compensation formula. With compensation settlement and the cnd
of the 1954 series much of sensationalism surrounding the incident
should disappear, It will be to Japancse interest to close out
or explain away administrative deficiencies and national vulnerabilities the incident has illuminated. It is probable that
short of imminent threat of war in the Far East, point of our
greatest depondence on Japan, we shall not again be shown so
sharply a lack of Japanese domestic security, absence of effective
control over bureaucratic apparatus, paralysis of government in
the information field, and a desire to pull free of the US and
other foreigners. Strength of Japanese neutralism and ifsolaticn-
ism may more often be evident.
‘
9: Remedies for these weaknesses must be soucht in developnent of stronger, tougher-minded Japanese Government and in
reesvery of the people from a postwar psychosis,
But a regine
Jortified with increasingly centralized cecurlity and informatton
controls, indispensable as such a dcvelonment is on present
evidence, would not of itself be enouch., It 1s highly question-
‘ble whether a stronger Japanese Govergecnt had it existed in
Nerch 19654 would have produced differytnt national response to
- the*PUKURYU KARU. Panic might hay@
been more controlled;
: hysterfa might hive been wore petnaged and purposeful, We micht
2 more quickly have arrived at the present derd center where the
covernnent seems to be letting the matter ride, The spectfie
“ sections 16 conld now take, if it desired to bring the incident’
to a‘speedyclose, would be to provide us with cenplete clinical
reports regarding the paticnts, to subnit a lunp-sum compensation
estimate, to control utterances of at least the senior personnel,
'
Failure to take any of these steps is at this cute prebdibly
attributable more to lack of willingness thin to lack of cay ibility.
And this reluctince in turn would scem to derive from a destre
to extract come advantage from uncontrolled panic of March and
April in terms of strenger bargaining posttion regarding Japan's
role in the Far Fa:t collective action system or revision o
-3. ie,
Departme:'
’
Historian's Oft.ce
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