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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.

By The International Herald Tribune

Published Oct. 22, 2019 Updated March 8, 2021

International Herald Tribune

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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.

— The International Herald Tribune, October 22, 1969

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