Imperial Valley Press

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1940

Japan Increases Pressure Against Citizens of U.S.

SHANGHAI, Dec. 5. (UP)—Americans in Japan are being subjected to increasing inconveniences because of Japanese irritation over the new United States "war loans" to China, according to private messages reaching here today. Additional American families are planning to leave Japan for the United States shortly.

Censored telephone dispatches from the United Press offices in Tokyo hinted at increasing tension and revealed that U. S. Ambassador Joseph C. Grew formally had called Matsuoka's attention to Sunday's incident in which a Japanese defiled the embassy premises. The foreign minister already had expressed informal regrets at the occurrence, it was said, but the embassy was not satisfied and asked that special police be stationed around Grew's residence within the embassy compound that houses offices of the embassy staff, the consulate general, military and naval attaches, and others.

It was generally believed that the U. S. Asiatic fleet is being quietly reinforced and that sooner or later part of it is likely to be stationed on Britain's Singapore naval base—a move which some observers thought may lead to a show-down.

Signal victories by the Axis powers in Europe, it was revealed, would have immediate repercussion in the Far East. One would be intensified Japanese pressure, through the Japanese-sponsored "national government of China" in Nanking, on British and American interests in the international settlement here.

Indicative of the sort of pressure the Japanese and their Chinese allies can exert is the present situation in the so-called special area west of the settlement. Japanese and Chinese military police Tuesday announced a formal blockade of this district, in which many Americans have their residences, because of repeated attacks on Japanese and agents of the Nanking regime by Chinese nationalist "terrorists."

Regulations now in effect, while they permit foreign residents the right of entrance and exit, are such that hundreds of persons must have passes and are subject to questioning by Japanese officers.

Japanese officials said the western district regulations should not be construed as an indication of "anti-foreignism" since they are "purely a police measure" designed to preserve order and curb the activities of terrorists who have assassinated scores of Japanese and their Chinese sympathizers during the past two years.