Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Thursday 1 November 1945, page 2


NAZI AGENTS IN JAPAN

ROUNDED UP

Letters, Codes, and Despatches Seized

From JOHN, LOUGHLIN

TOKYO

A DRAMATIC roundup of Nazi

spies and agents and Gestapo thugs has been going on for four

days throughout the Japanese home

island of Honshu following weeks of secret investigations into the records of members of the Ger-man colony.

The raids began in the idyllic mountain resort of Karuizawa. 120 miles west of Tokyo, where Axis spies and puppet diplomats,, as well as neutrals, lived in a fantastic atmo-sphere of terror and intrigue, with the Gestapo holding the Germans in an iron grip by controlling food rations and doling out Australian tinned food captured by Pacific raid-ers and brought to Japan.

Newsmen were first to discover the extent of Gestapo terrorism in this strange Far Eastern Nazi hotbed shortly after the arrival of the Allies in Japan. Since then intel-ligence officers have been quietly in-filtrating into the colony under various guises, including that of public relations officers. They talked with neutrals, who detested the Nazis for their arrogance and intolerance during the war. They sat in at interviews given to the Press by vari-ous prominent Germans.

FOUR days ago a special coach at-

tached to a train leaving Tokyo for Karuizawa was loaded with counter-intelligence officers and military police. It arrived at the resort shortly after midnight. Crowds of Japanese going home from Tokyo were cleared from the small Jap-anese railway centre before the spe-cial party left the train.

The occupation army had already ensured that the district was free of Allied troops by placing it out of bounds on the pretext of an outbreak of disease.

The raiding party assembled at a tourist hotel for briefing, then broke up into small teams and spread

through the colony of beautiful homes in pine plantations. Houses were surrounded, and at a pre-arranged time military police forced their way in, arrested wanted Nazis, and ransacked the houses for secret documents. They seized letters, codes despatches, and copies of communi-cations with Berlin.

In the first raids 21 prominent Nazi agents were arrested, but many more arrests are expected in the next few days.

ONE prisoner was Dr Karl Kinder-

man, who had engaged in spying against Russia. He was also liaison officer between the Gestapo and the Japanese secret police. He pleaded with the arresting officers not to turn him over to the Russians, who, he said, were cruel and uncivilised, and would shoot him without mercy. Among documents found in his possession were communications with Goebbels and evidence that he had links with USA, Australia, and India. Another leading figure was Franz Joseph Spann, group leader of the Nazis in Karuizawa. He escaped the raid by fleeing to another resort near Fujiyama.

However, the Americans captured Count Carl Friedrich Eckbercht Duckheim-Montamartin, one of the chief propagandists sent to Japan to sell Nazi doctrines to the Japan-ese, He did this by likening Ger-man military ideals to Japanese bushido, and encouraging the idea that Japan and Germany would share the world. He was a protege of Ribbentrop.

Paul Speringer. who told intelli-gence officers that he had visited Dachau before coming to Japan, was among those arrested. Another was Alrich Mosaner, righthand man to J. A. Meisinger, "the butcher of Warsaw." Mosaner was head of the Gestapo in Japan. He is already in a military gaol in Yokohama.