Monday, November 28,1988 The Battalion
Page?
World/Nation
Japan’s government, citizens
protest U.S. military forces
TOKYO (AP) — A monthlong
spate of incidents involving U.S. mil
itary forces has touched a raw nerve
in Japan, provoking outraged news-
E editorials and a sharp protest
he government.
On Okinawa, the southern island
where 35,000 U.S. troops jostle for
training space with 1.2 million Japa
nese residents, civilians complain
that houses were hit by bullets in Oc
tober and two tear-gas canisters ex
ploded at a night club Nov. 26. The
canisters sent scores of people into
the street, coughing and choking.
The tear-gas incident, which U.S.
Marine Corps authorities said was
under investigation, followed the
abrupt dismissal Nov. 25 of a U.S.
Navy skipper whose ship embar
rassed the Navy command by Firing
practice shells that hit about 1,000
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NEW YORK (AP) — Though
Clarence Charlton is homeless, he
knows he has a warm and dry place
to sleep — as long as he doesn’t mind
waking up several miles away from
where he laid his head down.
Charlton, like hundreds of New
York’s street people, calls the city’s
subway system home, and officials
say they expect the numbers to surge
as winter sets in.
“I can always get on the subway. I
usually have the fare,” said Charl
ton, 78, a former mental patient who
was wearing a black-knit cap, grimy
pants, no shirt, a sweater and tweed
coat one day last week.
“In the daytime I’m out on the
bench, and at nighttime I get in the
subway,” he said, lighting a cigarette
butt, which he says helps his asthma.
“In bad weather, I’ll go under
ground.”
Charlton had company that day at
the 179th Street Station in Queens.
Another homeless man was at the
other end of the platform, and at
least eight already were on the E
train when it rolled up to start its run
to Manhattan.
As the wipds get. colder, New
York’s subways are ''drawing ever
more homeless people. The attrac
tion: a warm, relatively safe environ
ment, all for a dollar.
For many riders, the disheveled
and often unbathed passengers are
not welcome on the nation’s largest
transit system.
“They stink,” passenger Bernard
Nashofer said. “They’re dirty. They
can smell up a whole train.”
Transit police walk a thin line,
rousting homeless people who cause
trouble but letting the others sleep.
Maintenance crews find themselves
cleaning the kinds of messes that
subways weren’t meant for. Subway
passengers learn to select cars by
scent.
In response, the Metropolitan
Transit Authority approved a plan
last week to hire the Volunteers of
America, a social service group, to
patrol subway platforms and trains.
Members plan to talk to the home
less and offer them the group’s shel
ter as an alternative to sleeping un
derground. But many homeless
people shun shelters, saying they
don’t feel safe in them.
Last summer, the transit authority
estimated there were 1,400 people
using its trains and stations as home.
Advocates for the homeless say that’s
far too low an estimate, and the au
thority admits the number will be
much greater this winter.
The problem is not unique to New
York; it is an issue only in cities
where buses and subways run all
night. In Los Angeles, transit offi
cials say, many homeless people,
drifters and alcoholics ride buses
from one end of the line to the other
all night long.
There is no policy against riding
the buses over and over as long as
people pay the fares, said Leilia Bai
ley, transit director of the Southern
California Rapid Transit District.
Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff, a
lawyer who is on New York’s transit
authority board of directors, said the
transit police must exercise more au
thority over the homeless.
“If they’ve paid their dollar they
have a right, providing they comport
themselves with dignity,” he said.
“But if they take up several seats,
urinate, defecate, then they should
be removed.”
feet from a Japanese coast guard
vessel.
The Navy immediately expressed
regret for the shelling, which oc
curred in Japanese waters near the
entrance to Tokyo Bay, but the Japa
nese government reacted strongly.
The Eoreign Ministry lodged a pro
test with the U.S. Embassy, while
several major newspapers published
blistering editorials.
About 64,000 U.S. troops are in
Japan under a security treaty that
obliges the United States to help de
fend this country, with an added ma
jor role in security for northeast
Asia. The treaty also obliges Japan to
provide the bases and training areas
needed by the U.S. forces.
The vast majority of the Japanese
support the U.S.-Japan security
treaty and the country’s anti-war
constitution, which give the United
States a prime role in defending Ja
pan.
However, Japan was never occu
pied by foreign troops until its de
feat in World War II, and Japanese
are sensitive to the U.S. presence.
Leftists demonstrate against visit
ing U.S. ships that may be carrying
nuclear arms, and the public reacts
strongly when a dangerous accident
involves U.S. forces or when the
bases appear to be encroaching on
Japanese life.
The U.S. Navy base at Yokosuka
wants to build more than 800 apart
ments but faces resistance from the
neighboring town of Zushi, which
has repeatedly elected a mayor who
opposes taking forest land for the
military housing.
On Okinawa, prefectural Gov.
Junji Nishime has blamed a string of
troubles on “something wanting in
the U.S. military’s chain of com
mand or a decline of discipline.”
U.S. commanders on the southern
island are reportedly reviewing
safety measures after a forest fire in
a training area in October and the
discovery about the same time that a
residential area near a Marine Corps
firing range had been hit by bullets
although the firing at the range was
supposed to be in the opposite direc
tion.
Professor writes book
on Texas bus history
OXFORD, Ohio (AP) — Jack
Rhodes turned his childhood enthu
siasm for buses into a book on the
development of the transportation
industry in his native Texas.
Rhodes, now a professor at Miami
University here, didn’t find it hard
to get rolling in his venture, even
though research for the book took
15 years. He grew up in San Antonio
and said he has been interested in
buses since his youth, when he lob
bied his mother to take him to the
bus station so he could watch the ve
hicles drive in and out.
His book, “Intercity Bus Lines of
the Southwest,” chronicles the his
tory of intercity bus lines in Texas,
New Mexico and Oklahoma until
1954. The Texas A&M University
Press published the book this fall.
The book covered periods when
there were hundreds of small, pri
vately owned bus lines in the South
west, instead of the two that are op
erating today.
Texas was an early mecca for de
velopment of the bus industry be
cause cities in the state are so far
apart. The first scheduled intercity
bus ran from Colorado City to
Snyder in 1907, Rhodes said. There
was vigorous competition among bus
owners to gain franchises when
Texas decided to regulate the indus
try in 1927.
“In their scramble to become car
riers of record, companies engaged
in fare slashing and discounting,”
said Rhodes, who is an associate pro
fessor of communication and direc
tor of forensics at Miami University.
“Some lines operating between
Austin and San Antonio cut the fare
in half, then began carrying passen
gers for free, and eventually began
rebating up to a dollar or a free meal
at the end of the line in an effort to
collect passengers in support of their
good-faith applications.”
During World War II, when bus
travel was popular, bus depots were
hectic places and some bus lines suf
fered frequent breakdowns, Rhodes
said. Privately owned lines began to
disappear after the war when people
began to be able to afford cars and
tires and gasoline no longer were ra
tioned. The private bus industry also
struggled in competition with the
railroads, he said.
In 1970, Rhodes rode buses across
Texas, covering 1,800 miles in six
days on small, privately owned lines.
U.S. denies visa for Arafat visit
Arab League urges session move
to Geneva to accommodate PLO
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Arab
League ambassador said Sunday he has enough
votes to move a General Assembly session to Ge
neva so PLO chief Yasser Arafat can address the
world body on the Palestinian issue.
Jordan and Egypt agreed to spearhead the ef
fort to reconvene the world body in the Swiss
capital, Jordan’s official news agency reported.
They urged the unprecedented protest after
the United States denied Arafat a visa Saturday
to address the body in New York.
In Kuwait, a senior Palestine Liberation Orga
nization official said the U.S decision was “an
open call for extremism.” Egyptian Foreign Min
ister Esmat Abdel-Meguid and his Jordanian
counterpart, Taher Masri, said they had
scrapped plans to visit New York in protest.
Reaction to the U.S. decision came quickly. Is
raeli leaders praised it, but Algeria, Egypt,
France and Norway were among nations which
protested the decision.
Clovis Maksoud, the Arab League’s U.N. am
bassador, said Arab nations felt “deep anger and
outrage” over the U S. decision and will ask the
General Assembly to condemn it.
Arafat wanted to enter the United States to ad
dress the U.N. body in New York on Thursday,
when debate is scheduled on the Palestinian
problem. A nearly 1-year-old Palestinian upris
ing in Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip
has left at least 316 Palestinians and 11 Israelis
dead.
However, the State Department rejected his
visa Saturday, and said the leader of the PLO
“knows of, condones and lends support to” ter
rorist attacks.
“The issue of terrorism is a red herring used
by the State Department, because the State De
partment knows very well that resistence to Is
raeli occupation does not under any stretch of he
imagination fall under the rubric of terrorism,”
Maksoud said.
Arafat has not commented on the decision.
Approval to move the U.N. body to Geneva
would require a simple majority of the 159 mem
bers. The members have regularly approved Pal
estinian-backed resolutions by an overwhelming
majority.
“I really don’t see any problem (of passage) if
the resolution is proposed in a reasonable man
ner,” Maksoud said.
“Tomorrow (Monday) the recommendation
will be made at a meeting of the Arab group” of
U.N. member states, Maksoud said. “Also we will
ask the General Assembly to condemn this deci
sion. This is the thrust of our thinking.”
“I think that also the people in the non-aligned
countries and the European countries realize
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what a dangerous precedent” the U.S. action is,
he said. The non-aligned group has 101 voting
members in the General Assembly.
A source close to the Arab League, speaking
on condition of anonymity, said the Arab diplo
mats will consider a legal challenge to the U.S.
decision when they meet Monday.
U.N. spokesman Francois Giuliani said the
U.N. legal counsel was studying the State Depart
ment’s decision and would advise Secretary-Gen
eral Javier Perez de Cuellar on Monday. Until
then, he said, the United Nations would have no
comment on the developments.
Moving the General Assembly out of New
York as a protest would be unprecedented.
Maksoud said the Arab group probably would
call for postponement of debate on Palestine in
the regular session, scheduled to end by mid-De
cember, and reconvene in December or January
in Geneva.
The Palestine National Council, a PLO parlia-
ment-in-exile, proclaimed an independent Pales
tinian state Nov. 15. The move implicitly recog
nized Israel by endorsing Security Council
Resolution 242, which guarantees all Mideast
states the right to exist in peace.
The PLO has non-voting observer status at the
United Nations, and is a member of the Arab
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