Gang-Busters in Tokyo

The raids went off without a hitch. Outside the city MPs quietly nabbed three of the four G.I.s suspected of organizing Tokyo's huge black-market traffic. Armed with submachine guns, more than 35 MPs surrounded Tokyo's fashionable Marunouchi Hotel, which the gang used as headquarters. The MPs manned the switchboards, took over the elevators, promptly caught the fourth.

Other quarry in the raid last week were two employes of the Italian consulate who had served as middlemen in the racket. The MPs seized them in a room where the Italian ambassador was giving a dinner party. Outraged at the rude interruption, but later apologetic, was the guest of honor: Major General Charles A. Willoughby, MacArthur's chief intelligence officer.

The existence of an organized ring was first suspected when losses from the U.S. Army's supply depot outside Tokyo suddenly ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Through a single G.I. operative planted in the depot, the Army's Criminal Investigation Division traced the ringleaders to the Marunouchi. On an Army expense account, another lone agent, a deceptively dumb-looking G.I. on his first case, plied the gangsters with women and stateside liquor, got a job driving one of their trucks. After ten days of such secretive investigation, the C.I.D. had enough evidence to crack down.

The four G.I.s had done nearly $1 million worth of business in sugar, tinned milk, shoes and underwear in the previous two weeks, planned to break up next day after splitting a final take of $465,000.

Private Frank S. Bobst, leader of the four, had been convicted of black-market dealing as a civilian, had avoided prison by paying a $27,000 fine and volunteering for the Army. He and his chief sidekick, Private Robert E. Tucker, admitted to having learned the ins & outs of the supply racket in the scandalous G.I. black-market operations in France.

But the C.I.D. had also learned its role in such earlier operations. In the European and Mediterranean theaters, in China, Burma, and India, it has convicted several hundred G.I. blackmarketeers. In Japan, it hopes that swift and efficient investigations will make a different story.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.