Banzai Racket

Into booming, industrial Sao Paulo poured Japs by the hundred. Members of Brazil's huge (260,000) Japanese colony, they had sold their rice paddies and cotton fields, had come to the city to celebrate the triumphant arrival of the Japanese Imperial Fleet. Henchmen of mysterious, begoggled Toyojito Sugai handed them Japanese flags, pictures of the Emperor and news bulletins which announced: "Americans defeated in 15-minute naval battle; 400 U.S. ships sunk."

Brazilian G-men got suspicious. So did some of the Japs, when the Imperial Fleet failed to show up. Their joint conclusion: Sugai and henchmen were not patriots, but racketeers who had been inducing a banzai fervor in Jap planters, then buying up their landholdings for a song.

Last week Sao Paulo police had Ringleader Toyojito Sugai and ten colleagues in jail. Their mulcted countrymen would probably be sent back to the rice paddies.

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