The Nome Nugget

JAPAN SUSPENDS DIRECT SS TRAVEL TO U.S. STRANDING 600 AMERICANS IN EMPIRE

UNDATED. Aug. 4 (P) - Japan took an ominous new step in the Far East crisis with the suspension of all direct steamship service to the United States, leaving about 600 American citizens stranded on the island empire, reliable informants said. Simultaneously the Japan Times and Advertiser, organ of the Tokyo foreign office, said the Japanese government, next week, will likely invoke a complete national economic mobilization to cope with the United States and British economic pressure.

While the steamship departures were suddenly cancelled, two big Japanese liners in United States west coast ports prepared for speedy dashes for home. In San Francisco, the 15 million dollar Tatsuta Maru discharged the last of her two and a half million dollar cargo of raw silk with emergency longshore crews working around the clock and rushed aboard a thousand barrels of fuel oil, ballast and cargo, and sailed for Japan. A Japanese liner previously sailed from San Francisco empty, the second to leave the United States without cargo.

At Seattle, the Heian Maru also piled raw silk on the docks and was posted to sail as soon as loaded. At sea, the Asa Maru, which left Honolulu Friday with 140 American passengers and a three million dollar cargo of raw silk maintained a radio silence on orders from Tokyo.

Dispatches from the Far East said the departure of the Hikawa Maru, the Nitta Maru, and other Japanese ships, scheduled to sail for the United States, were postponed indefinitely. Passengers aboard the Nitta Maru, enroute from China ports to San Francisco, were taken off at quarantine when the liner arrived at Kobe.

Shanghai dispatches said that Japanese troops are still arriving in increasing numbers at Dairen, Japan's port of entry at Manchukuo, where Japanese forces along the USSR-Siberian border were reported strongly reinforced. Unconfirmed rumors of new Japanese-Russian clashes along the Manchukuo-Siberian frontier, circulated at Shanghai, but the Japanese Army denied them.