8,000 JAP SPIES, SAYS DIES!
ARMY, F.B.I. ACCUSED OF BUCK-PASSING
5 NIPPONESE ESPIONAGE AGENCIES HELD ACTIVE
By Associated Press.
VALLEJO, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 5.--Twenty-five Federal Bureau of Investigation agents staged sudden raids on Japanese establishments in Vallejo today and took many persons into custody in an investigation of espionage in the big Mare Island Navy Yard area.
At least 25 places were raided.
Seattle Times - Chicago Tribune - N.Y. Times Special Service
WASHINGTON, Thursday, Feb. 5.--Details of a "Yellow Paper" relating to the pre-war activities of 8,000 Japanese secret agents in the United States and Hawaii, which shortly will be issued by the Dies committee on un-American activities were disclosed yesterday.
Chairman Martin Dies, Democrat, Texas, of the committee, recently told the House that the tragedy at Pearl Harbor might have been averted if he had been permitted by the administration to disclose the operations of the Japanese espionage system last September, three months before the attack upon Hawaii.
Dies had 52 witnesses ready to testify, including a former attache of the Japanese embassy at Honolulu, when he was ordered by President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull not to hold hearings. Peace negotiations between Japan and the State Department were in progress at that time.
One of the sensational exhibits
The paper discloses that an organization known as the Central Japanese Association, with headquarters at San Francisco, was a kind of holding company for all Japanese organizations in the United States. There were five Japanese military associations in this country with 8,000 members, all active in espionage work. They acted under orders of Japanese consulates.
Maps Are Seized
Committee agents seized maps and papers from these organizations which gave detailed descriptions of American naval bases at Pearl Harbor, Manila and the Panama Canal. The maps gave the definite positions of canals, air buses, mines, Army and Navy bases, Army divisions, submarine cables, oil pipelines and railroads. The movements of American patrol planes in the Pacific also were outlined.
The strange lack of interest by the F.B.I. and the Army in the operations of the Japs was emphasized in eight letters included as an exhibit in the "Yellow Paper."
On June 22, 1934, Chief Engineer Van Norman of the Los Angeles waterworks, received a letter on stationery of the consulate of Japan, requesting information "covering the entire water system" of Los Angeles.
"We should like to have information that will explain every point of the system, including reservoirs, quantity of water supply, number of consumers, filtering, purifying, pipe pressure, kind of pipe used, office organization, number of employes and the like," wrote K. Kageyama, chancellor of the consulate.
United States Notified
Van Norman immediately wrote to the United States Department of Justice, Division of Investigation, at Los Angeles, attaching a copy of the letter from the Japanese consulate and asking him for advice. He commented that the Japs seemed to be asking for a great deal of detailed information.
On July 8, after a week's delay, he received a reply from J.E.P. Dunn, special agent in charge, asserting that it was not "within the jurisdiction of this office to pass on the question as regarding whether it would be advisable to supply the data to the consulate of Japan." Van Norman was advised to communicate with the commanding officer at Fort MacArthur, San Pedro, Calif., as an officer who might be interested.
Van Norman wrote to the commanding officer and on July 11 received a reply from Lieut. Col. H.R. Oldfield noting that the matter had been forwarded to the commanding general. Ninth Corps Area, at San Francisco. On July 17, Van Norman got another letter from Lieutenant Colonel Oldfield stating that the "request of the Japanese consulate does not pertain to the peacetime functions of the Regular Army."
"It is suggested," the officer wrote, "that you contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, Los Angeles."
Van Norman gave up the matter then, deciding on his own authority to refuse the information to the Japanese. The last two letters in the exhibit are dated in January of this year. In one, Van Norman wrote the F.B.I. that he was enclosing the correspondence as a "matter of interesting reference." He received a polite reply thanking him for his "thoughtfulness."
The committee report notes, however, that the Japanese undoubtedly obtained the information because they succeeded, "through the efforts of an American prominent in the embassy at Tokyo who is believed to be pro-Japanese" installing one Kiyoski P. Okura as chief examiner in the Los Angeles Civil Service.
Okura, the paper discloses, got his sister a job as senior stenographer and in 1940 and 1941 placed 13 other Japanese in technical positions in the power and water division of the city. Ten Japs were installed on the police force through Okura's efforts, it was stated. All these Japanese recently were discharged.
Okura was identified by the Dies committee as director of social relations of the Southern California Chamber of Commerce and Industry, labeled a Japanese government agency. His father, Momota Okura, was commandant in the Japanese Imperial Veterans' League, one of the five military organizations in the United States. The senior Okura and his wife are now in the custody of the F.B.I.
Much Money Collected
The four other military organizations identified by the committee were the Heimushaki of America, which collected $425,000 here and sent it to Japan; the Japanese Military Virtue Society; the Japanese Navy League; and the Japanese Togo Society.
Committee agents found that truck gardens in the Los Angeles area, which furnish 80 per cent of the city's fruit and vegetable produce, were almost invariably situated close to vital defense spots such as shipyards, oil tanks, and the like. An investigation disclosed that 27 homes of Japanese were situated directly upon oil pipelines. These houses were jacked up and moved away.
A total of 248 Japanese language schools, with 454 teachers and 19,310 pupils, played an important part in the Japanese operations, the "Yellow Paper" reveals. The courses for both children and adults stressed loyalty to the Japanese Emperor and inculcated a war spirit against the United States.
In a section entitled "Submarines" in one Japanese textbook was found the following prophetic passage:
"It is our duty to go under water when the enemy battleships draw near and sink them by shooting torpedoes and at times to go secretly to the enemy's harbor and attack the enemy's battleships without warning."
The "Yellow Paper" contains a chapter on the operations of the Japanese fishing fleets off the Pacific Coast. Witnesses declared that many of the crew members on these small vessels were reserve officers of the Japanese Imperial Navy and frequently were visited by officers of the regular Japanese navy who coached them in the parts they should play before and after the outbreak of war.
On Terminal Island in Los Angeles Harbor, the investigation showed, there were some 3,000 Japanese who are now being evacuated. Terminal Island is the site of Reeves Airfield, of shipyards and refineries.
Other exhibits in the paper show cablegrams from the Central Japanese Association to the naval and war ministries of Japan expressing loyalty to the war program of Japan. One such cablegram on February 17, 1939, asserted that members of the association "pledge ourselves to hereafter exert more and more efforts from behind the lines."
Another cablegram in the same month from Yayuemon Minami, president of the association, declared:
"We stand in the vanguard of the advancement of our race further with the enhancement of the national glory of Japan and desiring its even greater progress and development we must exert our best efforts."
The former employe in the Japanese consulate in Hawaii was to have testified, the paper reveals, concerning fifth-column plottings by attaches of the consulate and their transmission of military information with made the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor such a success.
If all this had been made public last fall, Dies declared, the public would have been aroused to the dangers of Japanese espionage and the Army and Navy been more on the alert.
(Copyright, 1942.)