U.S.-JAPAN PACT GOES INTO OPERATION

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29239, 24 June 1960, Page 13

U.S.-JAPAN PACT GOES INTO OPERATION

Signing In Secret To Foil Demonstrators

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10.15 p.m.) HONOLULU, June 23. President Eisenhower flashed word to the United States Ambassador in Japan yesterday to sign the hotly-disputed Japanese-United States Security Treaty minutes after the United States Senate ratified it. Mr Eisenhower acted in keeping with a secret White House plan of action he approved just before leaving Washington on his swiftmoving Asian tour 10 days ago. The plan is believed to be without precedent.

His aim was to rush the treaty into immediate effect before Japanese demonstrators, led by Left-wingers and Communists, could delay action by staging more riots of the kind that forced him to cancel his Tokyo visit.

The White House press secretary, Mr James Hagerty, lifted the lid on the secret when he reported that Mr Eisenhower already had signed the formal instruments of ratification, along with his secretary of State, Mr Christian Herter, before taking off on his trip. The documents were then flown to Tokyo and delivered personally to the Ambassador, Mr Douglas MacArthur 11, so that he would be ready to act immediately.

The dates on the documents were left blank, however. Until they were filled in, the treaty could not become legal. But under the law, Mr Eisenhower personally did not have to write them in.

As soon as Mr Eisenhower was told at his Hawaii vacation headquarters that the Senate had ratified the treaty, he swiftly told Mr MacArthur to go ahead with the plan. The President’s message said"To Ambassador MacArthur. United States Embassy, Tokyo: Ambassador MacArthur is hereby directed to insert into the blanks in the instruments of ratification of the treaty June 22 as the date of Senate approval and also as the date of the instruments, and to exchange instruments of ratification.”

The State Department explained that this procedure had been chosen “in anticipation of the possibility that the instruments of ratification would be exchanged before the President's return to the United States (from his Far East tour) and possibly even while he would have been present in Tokyo.”

Observers commented, however, that the President’s move and the safe receipt of the documents in Tokyo had thwarted any possible plan by Japanese extremists to wreck the ratification timetable. In Washington. American officials greeted final ratification of the new treaty with the hope that its Japanese opponents would eventually accept it in Japan’s own interests.

Keen disappointment was expressed over the fact that the exchange of instruments of ratification, the final act necessary to bring the pact into force, had to take place in secret. This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the opening of diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan, and President Eisenhower had hoped to attend the ratification ceremony •in Tokyo and thus emphasise the event. His hopes were dashed when Left-wing demonstrators rioting against the treaty forced Mr Kishi to cancel the President's visit. Vote In Senate A few hours after the Japanese Government had completed its own ratification procedures for the treaty, the United States ratified it by a vote of 90 to two. The treaty grants the United States the rights to maintain military forces in Japan for a further 11-year period. Both parties agree to regard an attack on the other territories administered by Japan as an attack on itself and to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes. The Senate’s action, after eight hours of debate yesterday and 30 minutes more today, had none of the drama which marked the equivalent action in riot-torn Japan But there was mild opposition.

Two Democrats. Senators Richard Russell (Georgia) and Russell Long (Louisiana) cast the votes against ratification.