War & Poppies

Japan has invaded China not only with men and guns but with narcotics. Manchuria, captured by Japan, has become a narcotics "arsenal." Japanese consulates in China are distributing centres for opium. Japanese Army trucks have transported opium for the drug traffic.

These charges were made last week by Chinese Representative Dr. Victor Hoo Chi-tsai before the League of Nations Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium at Geneva. Unsubstantiated, they might have been considered simply another "atrocity" charge made by an invaded nation against the invaders. Quick to confirm these atrocities, however, even to elaborate on them, was the delegate of a non-warring nation--Stuart Jamieson Fuller, assistant chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs of the U. S. State Department, long a front-rank fighter for international drug control.

Representative Fuller, whose undiplomatic charges in other years before the Opium Advisory Committee have created uneasy moments but have usually been substantiated, had somehow collected names, dates and places to prove that Japan's Army in China was now importing opium by the tens of tons from Iran and distributing it to Chinese addicts. Specified Representative Fuller:

1) One hundred and nine tons of raw opium were shipped by Japan from Iran on last December 29.

2) Two hundred and eleven tons were ordered during January, February, March of this year.

3) Eighty-two tons were shipped on March 17 from Bushire, Iran.

4) Thirty-one tons were shipped aboard the Singapore Maru, which flew the Japanese military transport flag. At Tientsin, China, this shipment was distributed by a Japanese military officer. On April 22, three hundred chests of this opium arrived at Shanghai, were taken over by the Japanese Army there.

5) A Japanese Army colonel is in charge of the sale of 460,000 pounds of Iranian opium in the Shanghai region.

Representative Fuller charged that Japan, financially hard-pressed, aims to sell as much opium as possible to Chinese to help pay for the war to conquer China. However, the impoverished Chinese under Japan's occupation could never pay for such quantities. Japan's secondary aim, Mr. Fuller said, is to build a factory in Shanghai--as the Japanese have done in Manchukuo--where opium can be converted into heroin, later exported to the U. S. and Europe. Representative Fuller revealed that a Japanese outfit had already made a start on this project by shipping, in 15 months preceding last December, from the Japanese Tientsin concession to the U. S., 1,430 pounds of heroin--two-thirds of the world's legitimate yearly need, enough to supply 10,000 U. S. drug addicts for a year.

To Dr. Hoo's and Mr. Fuller's accusations, Japanese Representative Eiji Amau, formerly celebrated as the Tokyo Foreign Office spokesman, issued categorical denials. Supporting the accusers, however, were British-born Thomas Wentworth Russell Pasha, representing Egypt; Colonel Charles Henry Ludovic Sharman of Canada; Major William H. Coles of Great Britain. When the Chinese delegate offered to show the committee cinemas of Japan's alleged opium traffic in the now abandoned Japanese concession at Hankow, Representative Amau threatened to withdraw. Lone supporter of Japan was Iran's delegate, who could not believe that Iranian exports of opium had ever reached such proportions.

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