World Battlefronts: No. I Fifth Column

In Vigan, 200 miles north of Manila, a lamb-meek little Nipponese shopkeeper named Hara blossomed out in his wolf's clothing when the Japanese took the city. He was soon walking crisply about town in the uniform of a Japanese Army major and calling himself "Military Governor of the Province of Ilocos Sur." In central Luzon U.S. anti-aircraft gunners found their camouflaged positions revealed to Japanese pilots by mirrors placed in treetops. In all the Japanese beachhead thrusts they showed complete and accurate familiarity with obstacles and terrain.

These were only surface indications of what is probably the most numerous and brazen fifth column in modern military history. In the Philippines its ramifications are still hidden by the fog of war. In the U.S., military operations have not yet forced it to expose itself. But by last week, as its Hawaiian triumph became known, its vast extent was beginning to be visible.

In the Hawaiian Islands the Japanese fifth column worked so industriously that its most flagrant espionage was table talk among Army and Navy people. From a wharf a few miles from the Navy Yard, Jap fishermen in motorboats put out to follow the fleet in battle practice. By night they often turned up inside the deadline around Pearl Harbor's mouth, hissed apologies and withdrew when they were hailed by the patrol destroyer.

"Very interesting, those fishing sampans," a destroyer commander observed more than a year ago. "The men in them are alert and smart and you don't see fish scales on their nets. Their boats are immaculate—brightwork polished and everything shining. Navy, if I ever saw it."

In the 157,905 Japanese in the Hawaiian Islands (more than one-third of the population), Tokyo had plenty of talent, as it has among the 29,000 in the Philippines. Top civilian in the Hawaiian fifth column was the Japanese Consul General. His immediate instrument was the consular police.

The chief job of the consular police was organization of the Ronin, cellular organizations of youths educated in U.S. schools and preserved in their devotion to the Mikado by classes in Japanese schools. For these the Consul General chose many of the teachers, and they were probably spies too. Both the consular police and the Ronin were financed by the Consul General.

More highly specialized than either of these layers was Army Intelligence. It operated through a shoal of spies disguised as petty merchants (like Major Hara of Vigan), cafe proprietors, medicine-store operators. It was financed by the Japanese Tourist Bureau.

Its opposite number, Navy Intelligence, had its own crews and also worked through civilian fishermen, hotel proprietors, seamen, produce dealers. Japanese produce truck drivers delivered fresh vegetables and other foods directly to Navy ships in the yards, well knew where each was docked. Probably they furnished the locations marked out on the Pearl Harbor charts carried by the raiders of Dec. 7.