JAPANESE TACTICS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 March 1942, Page 4

JAPANESE TACTICS

AMERICAN JOURNALIST’S SURVEY METHODS OF DECEPTION. AND AN EXODUS TO BRAZIL. A few weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbour (writes Erwin D. Canham in the “Christian Science Monitor”), I heard again from my closest Japanese acquaintance, a charming young man from the Foreign Office in Tokio who was most recently in the Consulate General in New York. He frequently got in touch with me or with other mutual acquaintances. Nearly always his story was the same: “I am very much encouraged at the chances for peace between our two countries. I have confidential information that things are going very well in Washington and Tokio, etc., etc.” On the week preceding the attack, his story was just the same. Things were looking up. But a mutual friend of ours asked this Japanese if they couldn’t make a luncheon date. “No,” said the Japanese. “Very sorry. I’m leaving for Brazil in a few days.” Other Japanese who until recently ■were stationed in the United States apparently left for Brazil just before Pearl Harbour. And so far as I know, most of them were also spreading the peace talk on thick. So it behoves the United States to watch Brazil closely. Already there is an extensive Japanese colony there. Likewise, the bulge of Brazil is far nearer than any other American spot to the Nazi jumping-off place. The evidence adds up suspiciously to some kind of overt action in that area in the near future. And Japan was manifestly clearing out its useful and agile young men in the United States so they wouldn’t be interned or shipped back to Japan by some indirect route, where they wouldn’t be half so useful as if they remained in the New World.

Japan’s meticulous organisation of its overseas activities is second only to that of Germany, and in some respects even more, painstaking. As a newspaperman, I have received for many years a steady flow of Nipponese propaganda. Some came from the Japanese newspapers, in the form of magnificent souvenir volumes in English and other languages, portraying the great industrial and cultural achievements of Japan. Other pieces of propaganda were from countless organisations set up for the subject. Many of them were technically excellent. A few were crude, in schoolboy-Japanese English. LANGUAGE & LINGO. The Japanese have always studied American newspapers with infinite care, partly because their own press is so very good. In the Japanese Embassy in Washington there used to be a long table around which some six or eight very junior secretaries sat, conning huge stacks of American dailies. These ink-stained wretches had a theoretical knowledge of the American language before they came to Washington, but thereafter most of their acquaintance was with journalese, or — more accurately—with headlinese. I remember conversing with some of them one day, and discovering to my horror that these poor fellows talked in American headline language. “I see Chief Balks Probe,” one of them would remark, and the other would reply: “Yes, Probe Heads Halted.” No American could understand this lingo unless it might be the copyreader on a tabloid newspaper, and he would never use it verbally. It made a pretty good code for the Japanese — if they only knew. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected American President, the Japanese Government ferreted out of private life Kenkichi Suzuki, an obscure Japanese English teacher, who had been at Harvard with Mr Franklin Roosevelt’s brother, G. Hall Roosevelt, and who had once stayed at the Roosevelt summer home on ■ Campobello Island. This gentleman was trundled all the way to Washington, where he became perforce a White House guest and did his best to discover the Roosevelt viewpoint on Japan. There are countless illustrations of such painstaking work. Possibly most important at this very moment were the societies formed for the exploitation and study of the South Seas. Doubtless the Japanese know more about all the Pacific Islands than anybody else, have made long and ample preparations for taking them over, and thus have found the going rather easy in North Borneo and various obscure spots. They are probably estab-

lished already on any number of smaller points from which news has not yet penetrated. A REVEALING STORY.

And yet, despite all this staff work, this incredibly careful and costly preparation, Japan and the Japanese ar,e basically'unsure of themselves. I remember one revealing story told me by a high economic expert in Manila. His mission there had been noted by the Japanese Consul-General, who gave a big dinner for the visiting Americans. As in most such functions, the Japanese served beverages with the use of which they were not so familiar as their western guests, and as the evening wore on their questions became more naive and informal. Finally the Consul-General, leaning on the floor with his elbow —they were dining Japanese style, but the el-bow-lean wasn’t etiquette —said with the familiar and hardworking grin: “Tell me, what you think of Japanese?” My friend made the obvious reply that the Japanese were a remarkable people, etc., etc. “No!” cried the Consul, a displeased and baffled look crossing his intent face. “No! Tell me, what you think bad of Japanese?”