HITLER’S AGENTS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 25 October 1941, Page 7

HITLER’S AGENTS

HOW THEY WORK IN JAPAN POLITICAL THUGS AS TOOLS | ' ( ON TEMPT FOR "LITTLE DWARFS" I Every Japanese steamer that leave.*; San Francisco carries to Japan some of * the German officials who find their occupation gone after the American Gov- ‘ ' iiment closed the German Consulates. They can no longer pretend to be on their way home by the Trans-Siberian. But Japan is not a mere dead-end where they will hide and await the re suit of their Fuhrer's gamble with fate, writes a correspondent lately in Tokio in the London "Times." They were the organisers and paymasters of the Fifth Column in the United States and they are sent to Japan to reinforce the column which takes its orders from Major-General ; FiUgen Ott, the German Ambassador in Tokio. So important is their mission that when Captain Fritz Wiedemann. German Consul General at San Francisco, and Dr. Johannes Borcher.s. German Consul General in New York, were prevci• hI from sailing on a Japanese steamer they made frantic efforts to avoid being sent home across the Atlantic. When all the* trade channels were open. German residents in Japan num bered a few hundreds, mostly business men. To-day there i.s no trade what ever between Japan and Germany, yet more than 3,000 Germans live in Japan. The small colony of teachers and traders at Omori. outside Tokio. has beI come a large community. The fantastic lobby of the Imperial Hotel, once the rendezvous of cosmopolitan tourists, now resounds with German gutturals, l though—be the reason what il may—- ! the Nazi salute is seldom seen except from some innocent lately arrived from the Iteich. Those Germans are regis , ; tered with the Japanese police as lecliJ nicians, business men, journalists, and ' plain tourists, sight-seeing in a world ARMY ADMIRERS Although the Nazi Press lias been i "unified." German correspondents in ! Tokio outnumber those of all other ■ nations combined. D.N.8., the official news agency, maintains a large office. The various "Observers” have their roI sklent correspondents and an astonishing number of provincial journals are ; able to station representatives in Japan. Not all are devout Nazis, but all are regular in their attendance at the German Embassy. All put questions from 1 the same briuf al the Government spokesman’s Press conferences. In the i brown brick factory-like Home Office ; a trusty Nazi sits as representing 1 ! Himmler in the very heart of the Japanese internal administration. Contact with the Army i.s maintain led through the special military experts j and liaison officers assigned to the i German Embassy for the exchange of j information. Japanese soldiers have i always had an inordinate admiration ! for the German Army. They are attracted by its arrogance and contempt of civilians, its lofty position in the State, no less than by its disciplinary l and strategic traditions. Its defeat in 1918 was a shock; the fiction which ' ascribed the lost battles to a collapse i of civilian morale was nowhere more gratefully swallowejl than in Japanese j r fficers’ messes and staff college lec-. i ture-rooms. ! General Ott’s men cultivate their op- j | posite numbers, the young staff officcts I who are the real driving force of the | still half-feudal and virtually autono- i mous Japanese Army. German vie-; j lories furnish their "talking points,” jand whether the inside information, j they offer deals with the tactics of mei chanised war or aerial terror, or the i technique of planting quislings in Norway and “tourists” in Rumania, it is welcome to Japanese professional sol- , | diers, who have nothing to give in exj change except their potent political influence. DOCTORING NEWS The Fifth Column is perhaps the only practical form of propaganda in a country sealed against all ordinary pub. - • lie communications. In Japan to own a wireless set capable of receiving short-wave broadcasts is a criminal offence. Imported sets are altered by 1 the police before they can be installed. The Press is censored; the only news j agency is part of the Govei nment s publicity system. The two formerly j independent newspapers, one British, the other American, which a few thou ; sand Japanese used to read for information, were recently bought by emisj saries of the Foreign Office and trans- ! ferred to Japanese control. I The Italian naval defeat in the Mediterranean produced a comical example 1 of Axis touchiness and Japanese ser- ; vility. The Japan "Times-Adveitiser” ; deemed the news sufficiently interest- ; ing for a five-column head. Smarting i under this advertisement of defeat, the Italian Embassy, utterly negligible as j such, but powerful as the Axis ally, set i the Fifth Column in motion. The Japa- ‘ nese publisher was severely admonished and warned that new values were as nothing compared with the suscep- J tibilities of a well-whipped ally. An official was installed in the office to ; see that articles, pictures, and captions were henceforth given the proper i flavour. i To keep England and America apart j j has always been one of the primary! I aims of Japanese policy. In the early j j stages of the China war, Japanese readers were fed with false news that Eng- : : land was the main source of supply to j China and the prime leaders of mter- ' national opposition to Japan. Amei r:can antagonism was merely a sentimental tendency to sympathise with the under—dog and a misunderstanding ->f ; Japan’s true aims. Several innocent | I Japanese editors who undertook "good- j : will missions” to the United States were j disillusioned by the popular anger tho\ ■ encountered from coast to coast. Aftoi Washington had abrogated the treaty; ' of commerce and navigation it became I impossible to maintain the fiction of ; American benevolence. The thought | control was given a new turn. The Press ! played up strikes and isolationist ! speeches, and ignored the preponderant • American sentiment in favour of in- 1 tervention and the real progress of rearmament. FOMENTING WAR Germany does not rest content with the influence she can bring to bear > indirectly on the Japanese reading pub- I lie. In 1938 a Tokio Tammany politician bought control of the "Hochi . Shimbun." then about to be sacrificed : by its creditors. The "Hochi” became more German than the Germans. It , and the "Kokumin ’ are to-day the 1 principal propagators of the idea that German victory is as good as won. and ; | that now i.s the time to attack Singa- J , pore and seize the Dutch East Indies. The aim of the German inspirers of this publicity is war between Japan and the United States. They have little hope of bringing about an attack ; on the United States. but by instigating a course of policy highly congenial to Japanese chauvinists tlvy hope to induce a war on which Japan would hardly embark directly. Till ■ now the Nazis have failed, not because : the southward policy has been abandoned. but because the British and i Australian Governments have strengthI ened the defences of Singapore. 1 The Dutch, in strong contrast to '

Petain’s France, have shown that they mean to defend their inheritance. Their preparations are such that Japan must send a powerful expedition if she hopes for the Netherlands Indies would oe exposed to devastating air and sub marine attack from Singapore. While Singapore stands the Dutch can and will refuse to barter their economic and political independence for incorporation in the Japanese "Greater East Asia Co prosperity Sphere.” PATRIOTS AND THUGS aides in Japan is Seigo Naknno. lender of a Fascist party, whose members in elude some of the toughest bullies in the underworld of "patriotic” politics. Naknno visited Berlin and was ini pressed to find an organisation like lbs own running the Government. The Fifth Column in Tokio established con tact with him on his return. Members British demonstrations of 1939 and 1940. When war broke out in Europe Nakano's secretary was given a job in the German Embassy. His acquaint mice with Japanese political thugs made him a go-between through whom the Fifth Column could reach into the dark region where patriotim hobnobs with blackmail and murder. The Fifth Column feeds Japanese arrived in Tokio every other week with special credentials to some organised Japanese interest—youth, education, athletics, commerce, or art. The inissioncrs have gone through all the ceremonial which has become patriotic good form in Japan. An effective instance of the publicity value of this performance was furnished by the arrival in Tokio of some Germans taken from a Japanese liner by a British cruiser and subsequently released. Their first act was to parade to the Imperial Palace and testify gratitude for their deliverance with bows and Nazi salutes. In the smoke-rooms of Pacific liners those same men, according to the testi - mony of neutral fellow-passengers, were not backward in expre.v ing their contempt for the “yellow dwarfs.’’