RETURN TO BERLIN?

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 203, 25 May 1944, Page 5

RETURN TO BERLIN?

Outspoken Japanese PRESSURE ON SAKIMURA (Received May 24, 11.40 p.in.) NEW YORK, May 24. The Stockholm correspondent of the ‘New York Times” says that Professor Sakimura has returned to Berlin. It is understood that the Gestapo threatened that something would happen to his Dutch wife in Holland unless he complied with an order to return to Germany. Meanwhile, the Japanese Embassy in Stockholm told the Press that Sakimura had suffered a nervous breakdown, thus intimating that he was not responsible for his previous statements. Sakimura, a member of the staff of the Japanese Embassy in Berlin, where he was a trade expert till last year, when he went to Sweden, expressed the opinion that Germany could have been defeated last December if the Allies had continued to make progress via Italy and the Balkans. “After three years of study, I considered that the German industry could not defeat the western Powers,” he said. “Verbal • expressions of that opinion landed me in disgrace, and eventually in danger.” He added that from his own knowledge the stopage of Turkish chrome must be a severe blow to Germany. -