REVOLUTION IN JAPAN IS FOILED

Grey River Argus, 24 February 1949, Page 5

REVOLUTION IN JAPAN IS FOILED

MacArthur Forestalls the Communists

(Rec. 10.15). NEW YORK, Feb. 22. Two directives that were issued by General MacArthur last year upset the Japanese Communists

in plans to stage a revolution and

to seize the Government, says the New York Times correspondent

at Tokio. ; He adds that documents which have been made available to him show that the Communists expected their projected general strike of last August would turn into an armed revolt by ■October, and would result in the formation of a Communist “People’s Government” by February of this year. The Japanese Communists believed that them revolution would be synchronised with similar revolts throughout the non-Communist world. The documents show that General MacArthur’s in July last, forbidding strikes by the Government workers, destroyed a scheme carefully plotted by the Communists, to take control of the Government-owned communications network and the railways as “a patrol skirmish for the October revolution”.

The correspondent adds: General MacArthur in November made the announcement that minority' groups would not be permitted to interfere with economic recovery. This announcement apparently upset the Communists’ timetable still further. The Communist Party issued an instruction last July which told its regional committees that a revolution by violence would begin in October. It ordered them to acquire a large amount of sulphuric acid to start “fires by inadvertence”. The communications workers would give a high priority to Union messages and to sabotage, and would, eventually, suppress all of the Government’s messages. The Party’s instruction also urged the railway workers to leave their posts in a mass absenteeism campaign. General MacArthur’s directives stopped these moves.

The correspondent adds: The Far Eastern C’ominform, in September, warned the Japanese Communist Party to recognise “tfie grave situation abroad before starting the October offensive”. The Cominform added: “In the case of the Russo-American war, the Japanese Communists should start an armed revolt and a great general strike as an attack from the inside. Underground units shall organise the distribution of weapons. Co-ordina-tion with the Korean Communists will be strengthened”. Orders that were issued by Japanese after September revealed that the Communist Party’s primary interests were the sabotaging of production in order to reduce the real incomes and to cause discontent, and also the fighting of the anti-Communist campaigns within the Japanese unions.