The Press: Code for the Japs

Before Pearl Harbor, Tokyo's largest newspaper, Asahi, was considered sufficiently pro-American to have once had its plant wrecked by irate militarists. And after Japan's fall it was still the most favorable to the U.S. of Tokyo's six dailies. (Editorialized Asahi: "The Tojo military clique represented deliberate arrogance, ignorance, self-complacency, vanity.")

But last week Asahi got the toughest rapdown yet meted out to any Jap paper by General MacArthur: a two-day suspension. Reason: Asahi had darkly suggested that "some people think [the] announcement of Japanese atrocities may be timed to offset the news about outrages committed by some American soldiers in Japan "...