Let Japs Bet on the Ponies -- With No Races on the Square

By HENRY McLEMORE

NEW YORK -- The government is on the right track at last in dealing with the Japanese in California.

Pictures from that state reveal that the Santa Anita racetrack, world's biggest home of the sport of kings and suckers, has been converted into a detention camp and thousands of evacuees will be housed there while awaiting assignment to permanent centers.

The government needs to take but one more step to make this set-up perfect. Bring in some horses and resume racing at Santa Anita.

Racing was called off at Santa Anita earlier in the year as a war measure. It is my contention that it now should be reinstated -- as a war measure.

It doesn't make sense to have that many Japanese suckers living at a racetrack without seizing such a royal opportunity to take their money away from them. Japanese are born gamblers anyway, and it would be only a matter of time until the horses had taken enough from the Japs' kimono pockets to buy a raft of Defense Bonds.

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SANTA ANITA for the Japanese would not need to be run exactly as Santa Anita was run for Americans before the war. It was strictly legitimate then, with everything on the up and up. But, for the Japanese, who proved at Pearl Harbor that they enjoy a bit of the old trickery, Santa Anita could be operated with a few cute touches guaranteed to separate them from their yen.

The official, trained Santa Anita starter could be replaced by a man who had a son serving on a submarine in the South Pacific. This would insure that the horse the Japanese aliens had installed as a favorite, and were backing with heavy dough, would get none the best of it when the field was sent away.

The complex, foolproof photo-finish camera could be taken out and a 1910 box-type Brownie No. 1 installed. As this type of camera has difficulty catching any object that moves faster than an equestrian statue, the Japs couldn't count on too fair a shake in a blanket finish.

The number of races on the program could be increased from eight to just as many as could be run between sun up and dark. Post time for the first race would be 6 a.m. and the last one wouldn't run until just before the sun went down.

No Jap, no matter how smart a handicapper, could lick such a program. It requires genius to beat an eight-race program, as so many of us know. Not even a horse player who combined the talents of Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Socrates, and Roger Babson could hope to escape defeat from a 30-race card.

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To make it even tougher for the Japs, all the disbarred jockeys, trainers and owners in the country would be extended an invitation to go to Santa Anita and give the Nipponese a thorough going over.

The saliva test business would be abandoned and any horse that didn't actually do a jitterbug dance as he crossed the finish line would be passed as normal. Instead of giving a watch to the jockey who rode the most favorites during the meeting, a grandfather's clock would be awarded the rider who pulled up the most favorites.

Dye jobs would be readily accepted and trainers would be as busy as mothers before Easter, brewing up various tints. Welshing bookmakers would be greeted with open arms and allowed to do as much business as they could.

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The big race of the year would be the Hari-Kari Handicap. Every Japanese naturally would prepare himself for a big killing.

At the last moment, unbeknownst to the Japanese, some fine horse like Whirlaway or Alsab, would be shipped in and his name temporarily changed to something that would keep the Japs from betting on him. A name like Tokyo-In-Ashes the 2nd, with a breeding by Bomber out of Alaska. Or, Japan-Is-Licked, by 1944 out of Natural Resources.

Not only would the money raised at Santa Anita under this scheme come in very handy for the government, but think of how Tokyo would appreciate the treatment of its subjects in this country when word got back there that all they did was to go to the horse races from morning until night.