Moscow, Mar. 11.
Vladivostok reports that on March 1, the Japanese court at Southern Saghalin condemned to one year's hard labour, the captain of the Soviet fi schooner Vympel which was driven by the storm to the coast of the Southern Sakhalin on November 22 last year and was detained by the Japanese authorities 'The Vympel ¢arried four men as a crew and thirteen passengers including one woman with a two-months' old bab; Instead of rendering assistance to the shipwrecked in accordance with international usage and immediately returning them to the Soviet Union, the Japanese authorities, evidently on direct orders of the Japanese government, detained the schooner with the crew and passengers as hostages and offered to exchange them for Japanese arrested in the Soviet Union for various crimes, including espionage, The Soviet Government categorically declined this offer and resolutely protested against the illegal actions of the Japanese authorities and demanded the liberation of the absolutely innocent Soviet citizens who were victims of shipwreck, The Japanese government continued to detain the Soviet citizens and invariably repeated its exchange offer. These actions of the Japanese authorities roused Vladivostok where there is great indignation end an ever-growing demand of effective reprisals.
It is also noted in Vladivostok that the Soviet steamer Kuznetskstroi with zs men as a crew and 37 passengers, including women and children, which called at Hakodate for bunkering, was detained by the Japanese on February 19 and is still being detained under various pretexts.
Soviet. Protests Lodged As Tass learns in competent circles, the Soviet Ambassador in Tokyo, M, Mikhail Slavutsky, was instructed to lodge a protest against the unprecedented sentence of hard labour imposed on the captain whose only guilt was that his ship was cast by the storm on the Japanese shore, and also against the continued unlawful detention of the ships Vympel and Kuznetskstroi with their crews and passengers.
Tass has also received confirmation that the Japanese Foreign Ministry has repeatedly addressed to the Soviet Government an offer to exchange the crew and' passengers of the Vympel for spies and other criminals convicted or brought to trial in the U.S.S.R. and that the Soviet Government has resolutely declined this aller. sal for the Japanese actions, tration to Japan of eight Japanese whose prison sentences were recently commuted to deportahas been held up.—Tass,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.