1969: Student Protesters Paralyze Tokyo in Anti-War Demonstrations
Nearly 800 rallies were held in the capital and across Japan to demand the repeal of a security treaty with the U.S. and the immediate return of Okinawa.
ByThe International Herald Tribune
TOKYO, Oct. 21 (NYT) — Bands of students virtually paralyzed Tokyo today as they roamed the streets hurling gasoline bombs and smashing windows in observance of International Anti-War Day.
Similar violence broke out in nearly 100 other Japanese cities.
Trade unionists, Communists, and left-wing political groups assembled at nearly 800 rallies in different parts of the country to demand the abrogation of the Japan-United States security treaty and the immediate return of Okinawa to Japan.
Some 70,000 riot police — 25,000 of them in Tokyo — attempted to control the demonstrations and by midevening nearly 1,100 students had been arrested in Toyko alone.
In contrast to past demonstrations, when helmeted students bearing brilliantly-colored banners and armed with staves marched in columns against pre-announced targets and engaged police in mass battles, the students today used hit-and-run “guerrilla” tactics. Small or medium-sized bands of students swooped down on their target, hurled Molotov cocktails and tried to escape before the police could arrive.
Police sought to combat the tactics with a special mobile force of 3,000 men trained to move swiftly to the scene of attack and cut off the terrorist bands.
Shinjuku station, Tokyo’s busiest railroad stop, once again was a chief target of the student radicals, but unlike last year’s anti-war day, when the station was occupied and sacked, police were able to keep the students away.
Instead, a series of pitched battles between police and guerrillas broke out in side streets leading to the station.
In other raids, the students attacked police boxes, briefly occupied a studio of the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, rioted in Tokyo’s main outdoor food market and attempted to ransack the Tokyo Industry Club.
Air police at the American-run Tachikawa air force base on the outskirts of Toyko arrested a 24-year-old youth attempting to blow up a C-13 cargo plane.
Suspected targets of the student radicals, including the Self-Defense Agency, the Diet (parliament) building, the premier’s official residence and the American Embassy were heavily guarded by large police detachments and armored vans.
At the main anti-war rally in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park, near the Olympic pool, a crowd estimated at 80,000 by the organizers and at 20,000 by police gathered at nightfall under umbrellas and red banners in a heavy rain to listen to anti-American and anti-government speeches.
Toshikatsu Horii, chairman of the General Council of Japanese Trade Unions, which originated the anti-war-day observance three years ago, described today’s events as “the beginning of the general offensive against the security treaty.”
The treaty, which obligates the U.S. to defend Japan from aggression and Japan to provide military bases for American forces, is up for its ten-year review in 1970. The government supports automatic continuation of the treaty.
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