JAPANESE DEFEND ALLEGED MURDERER

TACOMA, Thursday, April 11, -- Seven hundred Japanese of Tacoma and vicinity will make every effort to see that M. Moriyasu, the self-confessed murderer of H. Omati, who was killed in a restaurant two days ago, escapes punishment. Nearly two hundred Japanese, including all the leading Nipponese of Tacoma, were present at the Omati inquest yesterday afternoon.

When the evidence had been concluded and Coroner Stewart had requested all but the jurors to leave the room that a verdict might be reached, the Japanese with words of consolation and encouragement, crowded about Moriyasu and M. Nakamura, wringing their hands with hearty shakes and patting them consolingly on the back and head.

A peculiar feature of the case is the anxiety of Nakamura, a bright Japanese of the city, to be accounted one of Omati's murderers. He was in the box when the shooting took place and claims to have fired several shots. Moriyasu however, asserts that Nakamura fired but once and that the bullet went wild. Each of the men seems eager for the "honor" of having killed Omati, who was hated and feared by all the Japanese of Tacoma. The police say that it the first case of the kind that has come under their observation in which prisoners are eager to bear the responsibility of murder.

The coroner's jury brought in a verdict that Omati came to his death at the hands of Moriyasu.