JAPAN: First Steps

In Tokyo, Foreign Minister Katsuo Okazaki and U.S. Ambassador Robert Murphy signed an agreement (already approved by Congress) transferring 50 U.S. landing craft and 18 frigates to Japan’s Coastal Safety Force (embryo navy) on a five-year-loan basis. The news created hardly a ripple in either country, though in 1942 any U.S. serviceman in the Pacific would have been laughed down had he predicted such a turn of events in one decade.

Under the benign but urgent eye of the U.S., Japan is beginning to equip itself for defense. Japan’s Safety Corps (embryo army) is training with U.S. Pershing tanks, bazookas, antiaircraft guns, heavy mortars, howitzers. This force, which now musters 80,000 men, will have 110,000 effectives by year’s end. The new Japanese air force will start training next month at Hamamatsu, 140 miles southwest of Tokyo. The nation has already started production of her first postwar airplane, the Tachihi R-52, a slow, low-powered trainer—but a beginning.