Honorable Homicide

A year after V-J day some Japs in Brazil were still convinced that Japan was undefeated. They had been told so by swindling fellow countrymen with a reason. The swindlers were still selling Java and Philippine victory stocks to gullible compatriots. They were using terrorism to keep the myth and their market alive.

Working through the powerful Shindo Remmei society, the swindlers had sparked fanatics into a homicidal campaign against all Japs "who did not behave like patriots and deny the lie of Japan's defeat." A gang, rounded up outside a small town in the state of Sao Paulo, was typical. "It is an honor," shouted one gunman, ". . . [to murder] our defeatist countrymen!" For showing "defeatism," 70 Japs have met death in the past five months.

Such banzai tactics have set Brazilians on edge and stiffened the nation's previously tolerant temper against the Japanese. As police rounded up 27 leading terrorists in Sao Paulo State, President Eurico Caspar Dutra last week ordered the deportation of 76 others. Said Rio's Correio da Manha: "We should not try to change their mentality--only their addresses." Correio's suggested new address: c/o Douglas MacArthur, Tokyo.

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