STUDENTS PROTEST
Some 4,000 students, members of Sampa Rengo [Three Faction Alliance], belonging to the Zengakuren [All-Japan Student Federation], attempted November 11 to block the departure of Prime Minister Eisaku Sato for Washington where he was scheduled to announce the escalation of aid from the Japanese government for Johnson's war in Vietnan.
The students, who managed to evade police blockades by sneaking into the Tokyo University campus the night before, marched toward Tokyo International Airport. They were met in the vicinity of Otorii Station by some 7,000 police.
The students, who wore helmets of many colors and carried wooden staves, charged the police lines and threw stones.
The police were prepared for this, however, and caught the stones with aluminum shields and nylon nets. Using their clubs, the specially trained riot police beat down the students and arrested 295 of them one by one.
The press announced that 372 persons were injured in the skirmishes, 320 of them being police.
The police also used tear gas on the students. Some of the students picked
"We learned that Danton, Carlos and Roth were arrested [April 20 at Muyupampa]. Two of them are probably in trouble, their papers not being in order. Danton should be able to leave.
"Danton and Carlos fell victim to their haste and my negligence in not holding them back."
A letter signed by "Ramén," Che's pseudonym, dated March 10 and sent to "Leche," who is presumed in the dispatches to be Castro, included a sentence: "Danton and Francisco [doubtless "El Chino"] have arrived. Danton must leave; I do not find him in sufficiently good physical condition....Danton will inform you about the second action [the Iripiti ambush]."
In a second letter to "Leche." dated August 26, "Ramén" allegedly wrote: "We will campaign for the release of Danton. He was carrying a message: We have arms for a hundred men and four 60 mortars, but not a single peasant has enlisted yet. I have twenty-five men under my command; Joaquin has seventeen."
SATO'S TRIP TO WASHINGTON
up the canisters from which the white gas was spewing and threw them back at the police. But the students were outnumbered by the police and had to retreat.
Prime Minister Sato took no chances about being late for his appointment with President Johnson. A cordon of police took him to the airport in an armored car.
Sentiment against the escalation of Japanese aid for the aggression of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam is deepening among the ordinary people in Japan, whose memories of World War II and its outcome in the atomic destruction of two crowded cities are still fresh.
The night before Sato left, a 73year-old resident of Yokohama, Tadanoshin Yui, planted himself near the prime ninister's home, poured gasoline over his clothing and struck a match. He was found alive but died the next afternoon around the time Sato arrived at the airport.
Yui left a note saying that he had chosen this unusual method of suicide to appeal for peace in Vietnam and to protest Sato's support of the continued bombing of the people of North Vietnan.