JAPANESE JUMPY

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 August 1936, Page 11

JAPANESE JUMPY

FRESH FEARS OF SPIES The Japanese police authorities have always had jumpy nerves in the matter of supposed foreign espionage activities, says a writer in the London "Observer.”

The taking of photographs of even the most innocent objects in the numerous “fortified zones” of the Island Empire has been especially frowned on. The unwary tourist who takes a snapshot of a picturesque sampan or of a large ocean liner in one of Japan’s ports is likely to. find himself under detention and exposed to severe crossexamination by officials. An American, a former Los Angeles; chief of police, with a record of friend-, ly service to Japanese residents of ( California, was detained for over a week by the Kobe police on account, of a few snapshots which he took on' entering the port. He had planned to attend a Rotary convention in Kioto;) when he finally arrived in Tokio and. called at the Rotary Club his speech was very different from the message , of international good will which he had originally intended to deliver. ;

| This police watchfulness has been [greatly intensified since the outbreak of February 26. While martial law regulations have been formally in force only in Tokio. the authorities throughout the country have reflected the tension in the capital by keeping foreigners under closer observation. One of the first victims of this enhanced vigilance was an English writer, Mr. Gerald Samson, who had spent over a year in Japan, collecting material for a book, which he proposed, to call “Japan Without Prejudice.”; Mr. Samson was arrested on the day' after the “incident,” held incommunicado for some time, and finally de-j ported. It was intimated that he had; been “spreading false rumours ” and “agitating against the martial law regulations,” and some of the vernacular newspapers did not hesitate, without any visible proof, to accuse hint of espionage.

More recently two Japanese, Minora Yokota and K. Oyama, were arrested because they had allegedly taken photographs of power sub-stations and transmission lines in Saitama prefecture, near Tokio, supposedly for the benefit of a foreign consulate. Another Japanese,, Ryt’ji Suzuki, was detained by the police of Tsurumi, a town between Tokio and Yokohama, charged

with surveying the Asano Dockyard and the Nippon Automobile Company. Further agitation was aroused by the alleged action of an unnamed foreign diplomat in communicating an article “True Facts of the Tokio Incident as Seen from the Beginning, by a Chinese Journalist.” to "The China Weekly Review.” This is a Shanghai publication, edited by an American, many copies oi which are confiscated in the mails by the Japanese censorship authorities because of their outspoken criticism of Japan. The “Asahai.” one of the leading’ Tokio newspapers, recently reported that the Home Office was endeavouring to obtain am additional appropriation of a,million yen (about £60,000 sterling) for the purpose of tracking down spies, aud it was proposed to assign a thousand officers to the foreign sections of the Tokio and provincial police forces.