Puff of Smoke

Goose-stepping stiffly across the Yoyogi parade ground in Tokyo, column upon column of Japanese troops passed a reviewing stand upon which stood his owl-eyed Majesty. Emperor Hirohito. After the last ammunition truck and field kitchen had rumbled by. the Son of Heaven stepped down, entered a state coach and, escorted by a squadron of lancers, rolled back to the Imperial Palace. Just outside the Palace grounds the cavalcade turned in through the Sakuradamon or Cherry Village Gate. A Mr. James L. Vierhus, employe of a Peoria. Ill., tractor firm, was standing on the curb. Afterwards he told what happened:

"As the second carriage passed me I noticed a queer sort of grey object hurtling through the air. Then there was an explosion and a puff of smoke.

"I did not notice any concussion. It exploded as it touched the pavement under the rear axle of the carriage ahead of the Emperor."

That carriage was occupied by Dr. Kitokuro Ichiki. Minister of the Imperial Household. The bomb was strangely ineffective. One horse was scratched by a fragment, the carriage was uninjured. Emperor Hirohito popped his head out of his carriage in time to see little Japanese policemen swarming angrily over the bomb thrower, a tall angular Korean named Li Ho-sho.

All Japanese ministers swear to protect the person of the Emperor. Within an hour or two of the explosion the entire Cabinet of white-bearded Premier Inukai bowed their heads in shame and handed in their resignations. The same thing happened nine years ago when Hirohito, then Prince Regent, was shot at as he went to open Parliament. As in 1923 he refused to accept the resignations, but unlike the 1923 Cabinet, Premier Inukai and his Ministers withdrew their resignations.

There was work for the Cabinet to do. In Manchuria, Japanese lines spread over the frozen land right up to the Great Wall, clinched their hold on all of southern Manchuria. There were reports that ferocious-looking General Gregory Semenov, who led a White Army against the 'Soviet in 1917, was conferring with five Mongol Princes about a plan for promoting the independence of Inner Mongolia. Because it failed to win the support of France, Great Britain or Italy, U. S. Secretary of State Stimson's strongly worded note citing the Kellogg Peace Pact and the Nine-Power Treaty (protecting China's independence) left Japanese army headquarters completely unimpressed. U. S. correspondents in Mukden discovered that the Japanese soldiers who punched the face of U. S. Consul Culver Chamberlain were suffering no more serious punishment than confinement to barracks. Far more exercised were the Japanese over China's increasingly effective anti-Japanese boycott. Spokesmen at the Foreign Office talked wildly of blockading Shanghai or Canton in retaliation.

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