James Russell Young arrived in Japan as a foot-loose seaman on a German steamer, jumped ship to sell space for, become advertising manager of, Tokyo's great English-language daily, the Japan "Advertiser." He also became manager of the Tokyo Bureau of Hearst's International News Service and King Features Syndicate, states, "Time." Mr, Young is author oP"Behind the Rising Sun."
Mr. Young lived in Japan thirteen years. He doesn't live there any more. One day in January 1940. Correspondent Young answered a smart rap on his door. Outside was a Japanese plain-clothes cop who invited him to visit police headquarters for a brief conversation. There the police took away Young's shoes. "Yon are_not going anywhere." they said. To William T. Turner of the US. Embassy, who accompanied Mr. Young, they shouted: "The American Embassy people are fools. Get out of here!" But Jimmy Young did not get out for two months. Most of that time the Japanese quizzed Young constantly, trying to prove that he was a spy-One exhibit which the Japanese thought crushing were photographs of captured Russian tanks they had fished out of Young's files. Young let them get steamed up, then showed them that the pictures were authorized Japanese War Office handouts which had already appeared in "Life" Another thing that aroused police suspicions was a note from Mr. Young to his wife asking if their young son had been to see the monkeys in the zoo, When Mr. Young explained that he meant the monkeys in the Hibiya Park, the police checked. found there really were some monkeys there.
Worse that the police was the cold prison. Mr. Young had nothing to sit down on but the damp cell floor. At last Ambassador Grew sent Young his seal in-lined over-cost. Grew is over six feet tall; Mr. Young. much shorter. "When Young turned up the coat collar, he was covered from head to foot. Mr. Young soon discovered that the Ambassador's coat gave him a certain diplomatic immunity. "As long as I had it on, the police would recognize it as Ambassador Grew's property. Removed, I was just another reporter." Young never took it off, wore it even to the toilet, later to court. He asked the police what would happen if there were a fire or an earthquake and the coat were destroyed. After studying the matter for three days, they announced that thereafter the door of Young's cell would be left unlockett. In case of emergency, he could get out and save the coat.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.