14 JAPANESE BOY SCOUTS SAVED U.S. FLAG IN RIOT

By Associated Press.

MANZANAR, Calif., Dec. 9. -- The story of how 14 heroic young Japanese-American Boy Scouts stood off a milling mob which last Sunday tried to seize the American flag in the midst of a fatal riot celebrating the Pearl Harbor anniversary was told today by Ralph P. Merritt, director of the relocation center here.

One man was killed and nine were wounded when soldiers fired into the rioters after repeated warnings to stop advancing were ignored.

Merritt said the Administration Building flagpole was near the area where the mob formed, with the Stars and Stripes waving in the fresh breeze.

"One of the pro-Axis sympathizers," Merritt continued, "started for the flagpole to haul down the flag. The Boy Scouts surrounded the base of the flagpole. They had armed themselves with stones the size of baseballs. They defied the agiators [agitators] or the whole mob to touch the flag. And the flag was not hauled down."

Merritt did not say whether reinforcements went to the aid of the small band or whether their countrymen in the mob withdrew.

Meanwhile, conditions at the center continued quiet today, as War Relocation Authority officials from Washington flew west to join an investigation and question leaders of the agitators.