Robert T Bellaire - Japanese Prisoners

Soldiers of the press! Today's war correspondence perform their tasks under battle conditions. Many of them have suffered searing disabling wounds in performance of their duty. Among the many soldiers of the press who comprise the staff of the United Press, there are others who have been called upon for yet another kind of bravery,

to remain at their posts in hostile and war-threatened capitals at the risk and frequently at the sacrifice of their freedom. Such a man is the correspondent whose story we bring you now. Robert T. Belair, manager of the former United Press Bureau in Tokyo.

The story I have to tell is not pretty. It's a story of inhumanity, brutality, story of what happened to those Americans who fell under Japanese hands when premiered tocho and the Japanese military plunged their country into war with the United States.

I know the facts all too well, because I was one of that American group in Tokyo. After nearly six years on a variety of assignments in the Far East, the United Press had sent me to Japan early in 1941 as manager of its Tokyo Bureau.

It was an uneasy and unpleasant assignment from the first. Police paid frequent visits to the United Press Bureau. Sensorship became progressively more strict and hampering. One day in early November, a Japanese-paying clothesman spent the entire day reading every item I had written.

As he shuffled through my papers he would turn to me at intervals and say, I very sorry for you. I very, very sorry for you. The next indication I had that I was in for serious trouble of some sort came several weeks later.

A knock at the door of my apartment aroused me from a sound sleep. I snapped on a light and slipped into my robe, lasted my watch. It was nearly midnight. I shuffled at the door and my slippers and released the latch.