The $5 Crisis

Shortly after midnight on June 30, a couple of young sailors from H.M.S. Belfast, on shore leave in Kobe, grabbed a Japanese cabby by the neck, robbed him of $5 and adjourned to a bar. They were caught, drinks in hand, and last week each was sentenced to 2 1/2 years at hard labor. It was the first sentence pronounced on foreigners since Japan regained her independence last April. The judge was careful to point out that the British tars got only half the minimum prescribed by Japanese law for assault and robbery.

But to London, fed up with failures and humiliations, this was too much. At the very moment of the arrest, Great Britain had been one of the U.N. nations negotiating with Japan to secure for U.N. troops the same privileges (including trial by their own courts) that Tokyo has given the U.S. security forces in Japan. The Foreign Office called the 30-month sentence "excessive and unjustifiable." Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden was off in the country, the weekend before his engagement to a niece of Winston Churchill was announced. He rushed back to London, a fact by itself enough to send newsboys into the streets shouting "extra." Mr. Eden summoned the Japanese ambassador and handed him a stiff note demanding that Japan hand over the two sailors.

Japan, fed up with six years of bowing before the occupiers, was also sensitive. The Japanese public applauded the sentence. The newspaper Yomiuri warned: "We hope the Japanese government, whose weak-kneed diplomacy was criticized in connection with the U.S. . . . agreement, will retain to the last their firm stand in the U.N. forces agreement."

In London, the drunken sailors became "our boys." In a savage little cartoon, Lord Beaverbrook's London Evening Standard revived memories of vicious Japs in World War II.

Things were getting out of hand, and the U.S. stepped in. Ambassador Robert Murphy, backing the British, took up the $5 crisis with Premier Yoshida.

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