NAZIS IN TOKIO

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24737, 14 October 1941, Page 8

NAZIS IN TOKIO

FIFTH COLUMN AT WORK CLOAK OF FRIENDSHIP EFFORT TO INVOLVE JAPAN Dr Charles N. Spinks. who was editor of the Japan News-Week until Nazi influence made independent journalism in Japan impossible wrote for the Malaya Tribune articles on the work of the Nazi Fifth Column in Japan, declaring that the Nazi betrayal of Japan parallels their double-crossing of

Italy. General Eugen Ott. Berlin's Ambassador to Tokio, controls a well-trained army of 3000 German agents, says Dr Spinks, through which influence is exerted on various Japanese political organisations, and through which extensive espionage is carried on. The embassy staff is 250; there are 150 " press representatives," and about 100 Germans are teaching in Japanese schools and colleges. Others are skilled manipulators working behind the scenes as information agents, technical advisers and military and naval liason officers. About 240 German technicians and experts are spread through Japan's vital war industries and 25 German airmen are instructors in the Japanese air forces. These are Germany's Fifth Column in Japan, and the German Embassy, the bee-hive centre, is guarded by picked Nazis armed with grenades so that any attempt at search would be noisy enough to be a serious diplomatic incident. Dr Spinks declares that the Japanese are not aware of the full extent of the Nazi under-cover work in influencing the important political factions.

Small portable short-wave radio transmitters are smuggled in under embassy immunity so that agents can be independent of ordinary channels of communication. Photographic equipment, sounding apparatus and gear for forging .Japanese official seals, documents and passes have also been imported in embassy bags. Currency Smuggling Using the diplomatic immunity, the Germans also operated in smuggled Japanese currency to finance their Operations. The yen is officially pegged at 4.20 to the United States dollar; that is, in Japan; but in the free exchange market of. Shanghai the yen, fighting against convertible Chungking currency, sinks to its real value, from 10 to 20 yen to the dollar. This has played such havoc with the domestic money market that the Japanese Government prohibited the importation of yen; but the Germans smuggle yen into Japan in German and Italian Embassy bags, the contents of which are immune from examination. Dr Spinks says that millions of yen have bee'n illegally imported in this way to help pay the enormous expenses of General Ott's Fifth Column. Goods bought in Japan with these cheap yen are sent abroad as luggage of diplomatic couriers for sale in other countries to build German foreign exJust before returning to the United States Dr Spinks went to a wellknown silversmith in Tokio to buy a cigarette case. The back of the shop, he says, was piled with heavy cases ready for shipment abroad, addressed to the German Embassy. Dr Spinks says that General Otl has Japanese Quislings as contact men linking him with the Japanese Fascist groups. Rash Behari Boss, an Indian terrorist, described in the Japanese "Who's Who" as the man who threw the bomb which severely injured Lord Hardinge, Viceroy of India, in 1915, enjoys the protection of the notorious Black Dragon Society, and is used by the Germans in their work. The Nazi Fifth Column has been successfulvin. controlling the Japanese pfess. Df Spinks "declares that tflhs Was made possible by working agreements with the Japanese Home Office censors and the Kempeitai; or military police. Unfavourable news is suppressed, and German propaganda is played up freely. "Through what amounted to outright bribes, the Nazis have gained control of the Hochi and the Kokumin Shimbun. third-rate Tokio dailies, says Dr Spinks. "Both have carried the editorial brunt of the Fifth Column's campaign in Japan. The Kokumin was reached in 1939 through its long-standing connections with the Japanese Army. In the spring of 1938 the Hochi passed into the hands of a bankrupt political agitator, formerly president of the Japan-German AntiComintern Society, who was provided with the necessary funds by the Nazi Presselieiter. Jacob Sahl. By blandishment and costly entertainment, he says, the Yomiuri Shimbun was induced to open its columns to Nazi propaganda. Three times the Nazis attempted to buy the Americanowned Tokio papers Japan Advertiser and Japan News-Week. The price offered for the News-Week was three times its value in United States dollars, but the owner refused to negotiate Last autumn the Advertiser was sold to the Japan Times Company, controlled by the Japanese Foreign Office, and now known as the Japan Times and Advertiser, the former American daily is fully geared to the Nazi Fifth Column, despite the efforts of its able publisher, Toshi Go, to keep :t a firstrate newspaper. On its staff is a special •'stooge" to see that the paper has a proper Axis flavour. Dr Spinks also states that the Germans exercise a sweeping control over the release of foreign films in Japan, through the Home Office censors and the military police. Reel after reel of so-called German cultural and docu ; mentary Alms are shown in Japanese kinemas. all glorifications of the totalitarian State and blitzkrieg warfare. Exploitation of Discord

Tracing the operations carried on by the Nazis under General Ott, Dr Spinks declares that, as in Rumania, Norway, France, and Italy, they exploit all political malcontents and industrial disunity. The Nazis have not failed to take advantage of the politico-military rightest upheavals in Japan. In May and June of last year, the Germans bsgan' to move, General Ott and other Nazi Fifth Columnists addressing crowds and public rallies on the benefits of political reformation after the German model. This was done to attack the moderate Yonai Cabinet, which had constantly opposed a German-Japanese military alliance.

Behind the scenes contact men and go-betweens were working feverishly to encourage the totalitarian movement and Axis alliance. Patriotic societies, largely financed by German funds, were in a frenzy of rage with the " obstructionist" tactics of the Government. Dr Spinks states that a conspiracy to remove the Yonai Ministry by murder was frustrated by the vigilance of the Metropolitan Police (not the Rempeitai). Later, however, the withdrawal of General Shunroku Hata, War Minister, u staunch supporter of the Axis alliance, who refused to nominate a successor, caused the Yonai Government's downfall. Cabinets in Japan cannot exist without War and Navy Ministers from the active list. This gives the Army and Navy great political power. Prince Konoye's Cabinet, which followed, launched the totalitarian movement and concluded the alliance with Germany. Dr Spinks declares that Germany is .desperate and will do anything to drive Japan into action against Britain, or the United States, or both. In more ways than one, the Germans are gambling against time, for thus far only a very few Japanese realise the danger the Fifth Column presents to Japan. In this connection it must be borne in mind that not only the people at large, but also the majority of Government officials, even in the Home Office, have no inkling that a Nazi Fifth Column functions in their country. This is due to the peculiar constitution of "• Japanese bureaucracy, which is divided into watertight compartments, wherein one group of officials has no idea what another is doing. Through the use of Japanese go-betweens and key officials, who naturally do not disclose their connections', the Nazis are able to influence internal politics without risk

of exposure. Nevertheless, the Germans are well aware that trouble lies ;;head if the Japanese people ever learn the full story. " Mein Kampf " Recalled There are many Japanese who have not yet been convinced that the Germans are their true friends. They cannot overlook the racial arrogance of the Teuton, the insulting references to Asiatics— including the Japanesefound in Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and other pan-Aryan German writings. . The latest forces of anti-Fascism in Japan which the Nazis and Japanese militarists have stimulated and directed into anti-British and more recently an anti-American hatred, have acted as a safety valve for the Japanese people's sense of frustration from an unsuccessful war in China. But there are few British and Americans left in Japan to-day. If conditions continue to deteriorate, and if the position of Japan becomes more precarious (even barring war with the democracies), the Japanese people will turn against the only remaining foreign influence in Japan—General Ott and his army of Fifth Columnists. Dr Spinks suggests that, if necessary, the Nazi army of/ Fifth Columnists, directed by General Ott, will not scruple to act in Japan with as much firmness and with as far-reaching effects as their fellows did in other countries, including Italy. The German Embassy in Tokio, he described in the works of the former president of the Norwegian Parliament as a "privileged stable of a Trojan horse." •The danger is greater for Japan than for anyone else unless the Japanese realise in time just what General Ott's army has been and is doing to make Japan play Germany's game.