Censorship In Tokyo?

The working press has never known quite where it stood with General Douglas MacArthur. Zealous public relations officers, by fending off reporters in his Far East Command, have kept the press from finding out. At his rare press conferences, MacArthur has talked freely; between times, his public relations officers have acted on the theory that no news but good news should be written about MacArthur.

Last week, the Tokyo Headquarters Press Corps was angered and surprised by a new shift in "policy." First sign of a change came when the London Daily Herald's Hugh Hessell Tiltman, who had criticized some Occupation policies, applied for round-trip orders to Malaya and the East Indies. He was told that, if he left the area of the Far East Command, he would lose his credentials and his family its quarters. He left anyway. Hitherto, correspondents had been allowed to leave the theater on reportorial assignments and re-enter without trouble.

Like Tiltman, William Costello of CBS had sent critical reports on General MacArthur. Costello, who planned a trip to Java, got the same notice as Tiltman. McGraw-Hill's Alpheus Jessup wanted to visit Malaya and Burma. Ex-General Frayne Baker, MacArthur's P.R.O., ruled Jessup would have to take his wife, who is expecting a child in a month, with him.

When a correspondents' committee asked who was cracking down on whom and why, Baker said: "Every time [you] have pressed for a clarification of policy, the policy has grown tighter." To correspondents, the latest turn of the screw seemed to mean that the squeeze was on correspondents to write only good news about MacArthur.

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