"Don't Hug Me Too Tight"

From Tokyo this week, on the tenth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, TIME Correspondent Dwight Martin cabled a report on the state of Japan:

SIX years ago, Emperor Hirohito, speaking to his people in the hour of defeat and surrender, composed a poem:

Man should be like the manly pine That does not change its color Though bearing the fallen snow.

Pearl Harbor Day, 1951, finds Japan a rising sun once more, and the snow on the manly pine melting fast. The most dynamic, aggressive and industrialized people in Asia are again preparing themselves for the responsibilities and delights of sovereignty. Already the scene is changing. Trim, alert members of the National Police Reserve (nucleus of the army Japan must inevitably raise to defend herself) train with U.S. carbines, mortars, bazookas and light machine guns. The old zaibatsu (financial cliques) are reviving under new names. Recently a dozen offspring of the old Mitsubishi Commercial Co. combined into four large firms.

Are these only the normal manifestations of a vigorous people coming once more into their own? Japan's approaching independence portends an all-important shift in the balance of power in Asia.

For the present and for the foreseeable future, Japan is solidly encamped with the free world. But she is going to stay in camp on her own terms. Unfortunately stubborn SCAP brass give little if any indication that they appreciate the difference between an army of occupation and a security force in a sovereign nation. The occupiers' unwillingness to give up the privileges—the luxury houses, the cheap and plentiful servants, the free schools—they have enjoyed for six years is understandable enough; the men who have run the most benevolent occupation in history have little to apologize for. But they have a lot to learn.

For Foreigners Only. The Japanese are tired of the irritating inequalities of occupation. They have had more than enough of the sleek new cabs for "tourists" or "foreigners only," the so-called specialty stores that sell luxury goods, tax free, to foreigners only. In Tokyo alone there are more than 40 beer halls, off limits to Japanese, where Japanese-made beer sells for a little under 20¢ a bottle; the same beer, with tax, can cost the Japanese 90¢ or more a bottle. SCAP has started removing some of these irritations, but meanwhile it is adding others. During the past few months, the U.S. Army has replaced its inconspicuous jeeps with a fleet of 800 sleek, wide-bodied, olive-drab sedans, which use up more parking space in Tokyo's already jampacked streets, while apparently serving no more useful purpose than a softer ride for occupation brass.

It is no secret that SCAP's proposals for carrying out the terms of the security pact amount to little less than straightforward continuation of many aspects of the occupation. Ridgway's advisers would like to keep the Dai Ichi Building (No. 1 symbol of the occupation), the Imperial Hotel, the Ernie Pyle Theater and a host of lesser buildings and facilities in the Tokyo area. Even more important, particularly in the Orient where the word itself is anathema, the Army wants complete extraterritoriality for its military and civilian personnel. The prospect of such privileges led one member of the Japanese House of Councilors to speak of "a new occupation."