Kidnapped Husband is Still Alive Like the faithful wives of classical legend who closed iheir eyes to despair and waited many years for husbands gone to the wars, the Shanghai Japanese wife of a kidnapped sea captain is waiting today for his return, 19 months after disappeared when the hostilities over this city, the Shanghai "Mainichi" disclosed on Saturday night Mrs. Yoshio Kotani has never lost the hope that her husband. Mr. Te: zo Kotani, will some day come back te her and their four children. Meanwhile she manages a boarding house for Japanese seamen under ihe patronage of the Japanese Consulate Mrs. Kotani's optimism is not based on hope alone, for she has received reports on four occasions that her husband was still alive. The last news to this effect was received in December, 1938. Since then she has heard nothing.
In the morning of August 13, 1937 Mr. Kotani, then 53 and captain of the Taiping, a Chinese-owned steamer of the Chung Wei Steamship Company, chartered by the Daido Kaiun Kaisha, was staying at Karatsu Kyushu, When he heard the news he sent a postcard to his wife to inquire about the safety of the family and sailed at once for Shanghai. Mrs Kotani received the card but waited in vain for her husband. On the way to Shanghai from Japan he was kidnapped by the Chinese sailors of his vessel and taken to Ningpo on Hangchow Bay
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.