'Playful' Japs, Detained In B.C., Stage Riot

VANCOUVER, B.C., May 14. -- (AP) -- Military guards with fixed bayonets patroled [patrolled] before the Vancouver Immigration Building today, as a result of a riotous demonstration by Japanese men confined there pending transfer to interior road camps.

The men smashed windows of their upper-floor detention quarters yesterday and shouted. They were reported also to have thrown chunks of plaster, an iron grating and rolls of paper into a street and turned on a fire hose, but authorities minimized these incidents.

Chairman Austin C. Taylor of the British Columbia Security Commission said "there was nothing malicious about the trouble."

"It was more playful than anything else," Taylor said. "Some of the Japanese just got a little fed up about being kept in the building and got a little exuberant."

He reported they had wished to talk daily with friends outside.

The Japanese are among more than 23,000 men, women and children in British Columbia ordered by the Dominion government last January to be removed to inland areas. Hundreds already have been transferred from the coast.