Word: shigemitsu
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...Nobody wanted to volunteer forthe odious duty," wrote a Japanese diplomat about the surrender on the Missouri. "The Prime Minister . . . was considered unsuitable because he was the Emperor's uncle . . . [The] Vice Premier . . . shunned the ordeal. Finally, the mission was assigned to Foreign Minister Shigemitsu." He was the little Japanese who stumped into history ten years ago this week, grotesque in frock coat and topper amid the tieless suntans of MacArthur's conquerors, to sign the surrender papers and take his nation's disgrace upon his bowed shoulders. One U.S. general recalled: "The Japanese plenipotentiary...
...last fortnight, the Philippines had reduced its claim by 90%. It asked only $20 million in cash, $30 million for "services," including ridding Manila Bay of its sunken hulks, the rest in capital goods, and investment loans. Still the Japanese balked. Last week Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu hinted to the Japanese Diet that he might compromise between Manila's $800 million demand and Japan's last offer of $400 million...
...have been a better choice than the man who actually got the Defense Ministry post; Arata Sugihara, a bureaucrat-turned-politician who has egged on Hatoyama to more and more flirtation with the Communist powers. Washington was pleased, however, with the retention as Foreign Minister of one-legged Mamoru Shigemitsu, who signed Japan's surrender on the Missouri in 1945. Shigemitsu is a sober, careful man who can be counted on to restrain, as much as he can, Japan's overtures to Russia and Red China...
Hatoyama and Shigemitsu are conservatives of long anti-Communist record. But they came to power in a curious alliance with the Socialists (TIME, Dec. 20); they are not averse to playing to an increasingly neutralist public opinion, and they are supported by business interests eager to increase trade with Red China. All week long Japanese officials paid studied calls upon U.S. friends to reassure them that full cooperation with the U.S. remains the "immutable foundation" of Japanese policy. The fact is, however, that Russia would pay much for Japanese recognition of Red China, and for the major discord among...
...speckled Kuril Islands of Japan's northwestern shores, or the return, say, of 10,000 Japanese P.W.s still held in Soviet labor camps. And the Russians, as usual, could gain much by dangling such baubles without delivering them. Obeying Japan's new impulse to neutralism, Mamoru Shigemitsu commented that "there is need for a careful study of the sincerity of the Russian statement." Molotov's initiative, he added, was "a big step forward...