JAPS MAY HAVE WRECKED TRAIN
--Dies Group Hears

LOS ANGELES, June 12.--(UP)--Japanese evacuees at the Poston, Ariz., relocation center have armed themselves with every available weapon and may have been responsible for a Santa Fe train wreck near the camp, a witness testified today at a Dies sub-committee hearing.

"They have taken hundreds of pieces of steel and pipe," Norris James, former press and intelligence officer at the relocation center, said. "It is only natural to suppose they have been concealed somewhere in the camp."

James Steedman, investigator for the Dies committee, read a report of the passenger train wreck at Earp, Calif., 18 miles from the camp, caused by burning of a trestle over a dry wash. An engine and several cars plunged into the gully, killing the engineer and fireman and injuring several others.

Steedman said Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and others have investigated the wreck and had concluded the trestle burning was a definite act of sabotage but that no arrests had been made.

"Japanese at the center were in the habit of going to the Colorado River to swim and could easily have crossed to the California bank from Arizona by way of sand bars," Steedman quoted from the unnamed investigator's report.

"Do you think the Japs might have been involved in the wreck?" Steedman asked James.

"It would have been entirely possible," the witness replied.