However, many on the Japanese left, and even some conservatives, hoped to chart a more neutral course in the Cold War, and thus hoped to get rid of the treaty and the U.S.-Japan alliance entirely. Therefore, even though the revised treaty was manifestly superior to the original treaty, these groups decided to oppose ratification of the revised treaty, leading to the 1960 Anpo protests, which eventually grew into the largest protests in Japan's modern history. Meanwhile, Kishi grew increasingly desperate to ratify the new treaty in time for Eisenhower's planned visit. On May 19, 1960, he took the desperate step of having opposition lawmakers physically removed from the National Diet by police and ramming the new treaty through with only members of his own Liberal Democratic Party present. Kishi's anti-democratic actions sparked nationwide outrage, and thereafter the protest movement dramatically escalated in size, as hundreds of thousands of protesters flooded the streets around the National Diet and in city centers nationwide on an almost daily basis. At the climax of the protests on June 15, a violent clash at the Diet between protesters and police led to the death of a female university student, Michiko Kanba. Unable to guarantee Eisenhower's safety, Kishi was forced to take responsibility for his mishandling of the treaty issue by resigning. Nevertheless, the treaty had been passed, cementing the U.S.-Japan alliance into place and putting it on a much more equal footing.