Mountain Village Operation Units

The Occupation authorities shifted away from demilitarization and democratization to remilitarization, suppressing leftists, and strengthening Japan's conservative elements in support of American Cold War objectives in Asia.

[citation needed] On June 6, 1950, Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, ordered a purge of 24 members of JCP's Central Committee and forbade them from engaging in any political activities.

[citation needed] As a result of the Red Purge, Tokuda and his group went into exile in the People's Republic of China and on February 23, 1951, at the JCP's 4th Party Congress, they decided on a policy of armed resistance against the American occupation of Japan, issuing orders to form a "liberated zone" in the rural villages across the country, particularly among peasants in mountain villages, just like the tactics successfully employed by the Chinese Communist Party in the Second Sino-Japanese War.

[6][7] In reality, however, the social and economic conditions in early 1950s Japan differed greatly from those found in 1940s China, and the Mountain Village Operation Units had been given an impossible task.

[6] Sent into the mountains without training, food, supplies, or weapons, they were supposed to build a revolutionary army in accordance with Maoist doctrine by radicalizing the "peasant farmers.

[6] As a result, many of the JCP cadres sent to form the Mountain Village Operations Units ran out of food and found no place to stay, and thus soon gave up and straggled back to the cities.

In July 1952, the Subversive Activities Prevention Law was enacted and enforced to clamp down on the JCP's attacks, with militants being rounded up, tried, and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

"[citation needed] How to Raise Flower Bulbs was the secret publication setting out concepts relating to the party's military policy such as construction and use of Molotov cocktails.

However, their arts and culture-based campaign, including such thing as kamishibai attacking "feudalistic" landlords, was not accepted by locals and their newspapers and propaganda leaflets were quickly handed over to the police.

The recollections of participants are published in certain New Left bulletins, and the Mountain Village Operation Units at the time of the 6th Party Congress is the backdrop for Sho Shibata's Akutagawa Award-winning 1964 novel Saredo Warera ga Hibi ("Those Were the Days, However...").