Monday, Jul. 23, 1951
Terms of Peace
Also announced last week: the terms of the momentous Japanese peace treaty, to be signed at San Francisco on Sept. 4 by the U.S., Great Britain and some 50 other former enemies of Japan. Main points:
P:Japan becomes a fully sovereign nation with authority to rearm or develop its economy as it pleases.
P:Japan is eligible for U.N.. membership.
P:The occupation of Japan ends 90 days after the treaty goes into effect -- but the U.S. will sign a separate agreement to per mit its forces to keep air, sea and land bases in Japan.
P:Japan will pay no cash or material reparations, but will give reparations through labor. Under this plan, former enemy countries may send raw materials to Japan to be processed, free of charge.
P:Japan renounces its claims to Formosa (held by the Chinese Nationalists), the Kurile Islands and South Sakhalin (Rus sia got both at Yalta), the 623 formerly mandated islands of the Caroline, Mariana and Marshall chain (now controlled by the U.S. under U.N. trusteeship), and the Bonin and Ryukyu Islands, including B-29 base Okinawa (now occupied by the U.S.).
In Washington, Ambassador Dulles, who in 14 weeks of hard globe-trotting convinced the U.S.'s allies that the best hope for permanent peace with Japan lies in a magnanimous peace (TIME, June 25), said: "The treaty is truly one of reconciliation. Never in modern times have the victors in a great and bitter war applied this principle. They have, in the name of peace, imposed discriminations and humiliation which have bred new war. [We] would avoid that great error."
Russia has been invited to San Francisco but is not likely to accept: the Kremlin demanded last month that the Japanese treaty be turned over to a Big Four conference of the U.S., Russia, Britain and Communist China, assailed the U.S. plan, which excludes the Chinese Reds -- like the Nationalists -- from signing the treaty (Japan will be free to choose later which Chinese regime it wishes to make peace with). Last week the State Department rejected the Russian. proposal. Said Dulles: "I hope the Russians will come along, but... we will proceed in any event. They have no veto power over this situation."
Most allied objections to the draft treaty--Britain wanted a more punitive peace, France didn't want to irritate Russia--have been ironed out. Still dissatisfied: the Philippines, which protests bitterly that the treaty will too quickly restore Japan to dominance in Asia, still insists on reparations. Indonesia, too, wants "quite a bit of money" from Japan,
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