press for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the country. It calls for negotiation to achieve an agreement that will leave the Vietnamese free to decide their own future,"
STATE DEPARTMENT SEES "COMMUNIST TAKEOVER" . IN TOKYO PRESS
In testimony before the Senate foreign relations committee, Douglas MacArthur II, former U.S. ambassador to Tokyo, and George W. Ball, under secretary in the State Department, alleged mass infiltration of Communist party members in the editorial staffs of the Mainichi Shimbun and the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's two foremost newspapers,
The news created a sémsation in Japan Where these journals are as “respectable” as the Paris Le Monde, the New York Times or the London Times.
The two newspapers held up publication of the Washington news item in face of the "acute embarrassment" of U.S.Ambassador Reischauer and only published their comments after receiving a “mollifying" statement from the American diplomat.
The Asahi staff, according to the Tokyo correspondent of the London Times [April 301, declared that the paper's "five million member ship will be inclined to think, when it has the chance, that a communist in the American view is anyone who is‘against American. policy." .
The Mainichi said that the testimony constituted ta grave insult to Japanese public opinion and the Japanese people." The editors added: "It must be regarded as regrettable that American policy-makers, with such a meagre knowledge of Japan, are allowed to continue their Asian policy." [Quoted in the London Times May 1.]
The Tokyo correspondent of the London Times said: “The storm evidently arises from Japanese newspapers! sudden emergence from: their non=committal shell to launch scathing attacks on American policy in Vietnam."
?
~B—
He added: “Particularly at this time of crisis in Vietnan,. the United States could well have done without such State Department bungling, for it will be harder than ever to gain credibility here for anything coming out of Washington, As a lesson in how to lose friends it must be hard to beat."