JAPANESE BUCCANEERS PLAY “HIDE-AND-SEEK”

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28237, 27 March 1957, Page 17

JAPANESE BUCCANEERS PLAY “HIDE-AND-SEEK”

(From a Reuter Correspondent)

TOKYO. Modem Japanese buccaneers aboard powerful motor launches are playing a high speed game of hide-and-seek for high stakes with harbour police in Tokyo Bay. The twentieth-century pirate is no longer interested in cargoes of costly silks, rare spices, or a pretty captive to be held to ransom. • His main targets are the strings of barges filled with scrap iron being ferried from foreign freighters to waterfront steel mills. Japanese police estimate the pirates have stolen more than 120,000 tons of scrap metal during the last few months. Police complain the pirates are being aided by the large floating population that crowds the 25 canals and six rivers flowing into Tokyo Bay. Informing Risk If anybody knows where the main pirate lair is he is not taking the risk of informing the police. During the 83 years the Tokyo Harbour Police Force has been in existence, many an informer’s body has been fished out of the bay and taken ashore for burial. Daily news sheets publish news of the arrival of freighters with scrap iron cargoes and conveniently locate the anchorages in the bay. As soon as the freighters begin to unload, the pirates begin to prowl. The Deputy Superintendent of the Tokyo Harbour Police (Mr Toshikazu Saito) who is in charge of the fight against the pirates, said his present battle was one of the strangest he has conducted during more than 20 years of service. He said police believed the pirates kept their launches and other craft in some of the more deserted coves in the bay or in conveniently located dockyards and small boat anchorages. He said the most common pirate maneouvre included a quick descent on to a string of barges being towed to the steel mill wharves. Barge Cut Adrift The last barge was usually cut adrift and the towing tug skipper informed. When the tug slipped the towline to go to the rescue of the drifting barge the pirates slipped in, picked up the tow and dashed into one of the rivers or canals where accomplices unloaded the barges at leisure. , Any tugboat captains who failed to fall for the ruse were usually boarded at pistol point and severely handled, before the barges were stolen. The superintendent’s “beat stretches northwards for 10 miles and some 40 miles to the south to the United States naval base at Yokosuka. He has a police force of 500 men using 50 patrol vessels. The police launches, some of them powered by diesel engines and capable of 40 knots, are armed with searchlights, machine guns, and .303 Lee Enfield rifles. Each of the largest vessels carries a crew of eight—a coxswain, navigator, radio operator, an engineer, and four seamen. The crew, all regular members of the police force, are trained at the Government’s nautical school in Tokyo. Supervision of Traffic During a patrol, the crews supervise a daily shipping traffic, which includes at least two ocean freighters, about 35 coastal and inter-island cargo vessels, 3000 tugs, colliers, water-and-oil-light-ers as well as more han 25,000 ferries, fishing vessels, and barges. A few shallow-draught police launches patrol the rivers and canals that are crammed .with barges, houseboats, floating bars, restaurants, and brothels. Mr Saito said that there were no reliable estimates aS to how many persons earned a living from the waters of the bay. Police records contain the names of about 12,000 “water-rats,” who earn a living transporting thieves to rob foreign freighter crews .or

carrying seamen up the rivers and the canals to the entertainment quarters. The superintendent said some waterfront gangs act as “gobetweens” for parties engaged in smuggling money, quality textiles, watches, and jewellery into Japan.

Strict international watch on suspected drug traffic operators has severely curtailed the flow of heroin, opium and other drugs into this country, Mr Saito said. But police suspect that a busy traffic in foreign currency, principally United States dollars, is continuing.