Jackson Advocate

Crisis Says
Racialism
Damages U. S.
In Japan

NEW YORK - America's segregated Army of Occupation posted a perplexing riddle for the Japanese when America was making such an effort to democratize them," state Hugh H. and Mable M. Smythe in their article, "Report from Japan: Comments on the Race Question" in the March issue of the Crisis, official organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The Smythes, who have been teaching at Yamaguchi University and Shiga National University in Japan, said that although the Japanese themselves more or less expected to be subject to discrimination by the occupation forces, they did not expect America's "two-army-structure-one white, one black." The authors report further that "the belated change in July, 1951 . . . to a policy of racial integration in the Far East Command came too late to create any positive democratic impression.

Incidents in America that have a racial twist are regularly reported in the Japanese press, the Smythes write, "among others, it reported . . . coining of new Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver fifty-cent pieces,

and pointed out that in hiring Janet Collins, the Metropolitan Opera Association had employed the first Negro performer in its history. But along with this it did not fail to note the Cicero, Illinois, riot: the refusal of a cemetery official in the Midwest to accept the body of an Indian war veteran simply because he was not white; and the killing of Negro seaman William Harvey by the captain of the Brandtsen liner, Flying Trader, while the ship was enroute from Japan to the Philippines."

Also featured in the March 'Crisis' are "the Negro in New Mexico," by R. L. Chambers; "problems at Inter-racial Colleges"; "Bloodless Revolution on the Gold Coast" and an article on the Cairo, Illinois school fight.