Japan: Regrettable Destruction of Peaceful Corps Existence

Ever since the Japanese recovered from World War II and moved back into the ranks of the world's industrial giants, their allies have been urging them to take a greater interest in foreign affairs — and especially to help out in aid to underdeveloped countries. In the success of the U.S. Peace Corps, Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda thought he saw his chance. Drafting plans for a Japanese copy, he dispatched officials to likely recipients in Southeast Asia and Africa. The Africans were interested enough, but when Ikeda's emissaries got closer to home, they ran head-on into memories of Japan's "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."

Orientally polite, India, Pakistan and Ceylon studied their fingernails, and said no thanks. Thailand, home of the River Kwai, and Malaysia, which remembers the ignominious defeat of Britain's bastion at Singapore, explained they needed engineers, not volunteers. Indonesia snarled at Ikeda's men as "cat's-paws of American imperialism," and in the Philippines the Japanese were actually pelted with stones. His good works nipped in the bud, Ikeda last week resignedly admitted he was "postponing indefinitely" any further discussion of a Japanese peace corps.