Blood-Red Patriot

The Japanese Government is in the hands of extremists. One faction--the Army group--wants to seize the prize of the Indies; another wants to overthrow the Emperor and seize power for itself. Foremost among the latter is a dark character named Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto, who has been involved in enough shady operations to give several firing squads employment, but who has never been punished with anything but words.

Colonel Hashimoto is an extremist's cynosure: he is tough, aggressive, cruel, tenacious, mystical. He loves action, and he acts by instinct. His body and mind are as hard as steel but also as sensitive as an ack-ack predictor. He learned the technique of revolution as a Japanese military attache by watching Russian barricades in 1917. By 1931, he commanded a heavy-artillery unit in Manchuria, and was one of those responsible for the Manchurian incident of that year. Five years later he was one of the plotters in the bloody "February Revolt," in which many Government leaders were killed. He was publicly cashiered, but with the outbreak of war in China was taken back into the Army. In December 1937, on his own initiative he ordered his artillery and air squadron to fire on the British gunboats Ladybird, Scarab and Bee, and on the U.S.S. Panay, which was sunk. For this gross insubordination he was reprimanded but never punished.

Later the brash Colonel showed up as the head of a formidable outfit which looked much like Hitler's Elite Guard--the Japan Youth Party, claiming 100,000 ardent members. Its flag, a white sun against a red ball, symbolized "bloodred patriotism under a white-hot sun." The commander of this private army boasted: "Watch me, Hashimoto. I am no man to sit still and talk."

But during the last few months, Kingoro Hashimoto has sat still as a spider, spinning a web of revolt with his subtle talk. He brain-trusted Premier Prince Fumimaro Konoye in the latter's return to power, and was one of the eagerest agitators for the dissolution of the old political parties.

Last week Wilfrid Fleisher, who for ten years was managing editor of his father's Japan Advertiser until it was more or less forcibly bought out with German money last month, arrived in San Francisco. For the first time in many years -- since he knew he was not going back to Japan -- he spoke with neither official nor self-imposed censorship.

"I can now reveal for the first time," said Wilfrid Fleisher, "a plot of last July 5 by which a group of reactionary members of the so-called 'God-sent' troops intended to assassinate former Premier Mitsumasa Yonai and the Imperial House hold Minister Tsuneo Matsudaira." The leader of this plot was Colonel Hashimoto.

Japanese police arrested 38 of the plotters -- but not Colonel Hashimoto. One month later Premier Yonai fell, Prince Konoye took over the Government, and Colonel Hashimoto was made director of the Imperial Rule Assistance Movement, central directing agency in the "new national structure." There was no reason for the fiery Colonel to withdraw his admonition: "Watch me."

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