Roundup

The zealous authorities in Norfolk, Va. did not even wait to hear from the FBI. They rounded up every Japanese they could find, clapped them in jail.

From coast to coast, FBI men swooped on Axis nationals. In the Canal Zone hundreds of Japanese aliens were interned (see cut, p. 13). By week's end 1,370 Japs, 1,002 Germans and 169 Italians had been arrested. In almost every case, the FBI had been watching the arrested aliens for at least a year.

Potential Column. The 1,124,000 citizens of Germany, Italy and Japan who live in the U.S. are potentially the biggest fifth column in the world. Said Attorney General Francis Biddle: "So long as the aliens in this country conduct themselves in accordance with law, they need fear no interference by the Department of Justice."

Comforts of Home. In Philadelphia, FBI men picked up Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe. 45, who had last been reported in Mexico, and Dr. Hermann Ranke, one of the world's ranking Egyptologists, who held a visiting professorship at the University of Pennsylvania.

In New York, they snared Antoine Gazda, Austrian-born inventor, who holds the U.S. rights to Switzerland's Oerlikon cannon, now being manufactured in Providence for the U.S. Navy. At Roosevelt Field Inn on Long Island, county police arrested Baroness Lisette von Kapri, a civilian flyer, born in Rumania, who for the past year has been friendly with student pilots at Roosevelt Field. In Alexandria, Va., the prize was pink-cheeked Kurt Sell, Washington correspondent for Germany's official DNB news agency.

All these suspicious aliens will receive hearings before they are interned. Some may be paroled if found harmless, the rest will go to detention camps. Italians will probably join the 1,000 or so agents of the Duce who are now held at Fort Missoula, Mont. (TIME, Aug. 8). Germans may be sent to Fort Lincoln, N.Dak., where some 300 Nazis are now interned.

They will be considerably more comfortable than they would be at home. At both these concentration camps are warm barracks, playing fields, good food. Chef at Fort Missoula is Orlando Figini, who managed the restaurant in the Italian Village at the New York World's Fair.

Sorrowful Yellow Men. Not half so happy were thousands of enemy aliens who did not fall into the FBI dragnet last week. In Los Angeles a 61-year-old Japanese, Takematzu Izumi, a resident of California since 1896, swallowed poison when he heard that Japan had attacked Hawaii. Said he: "I am ashamed...." In Seattle the principal of the Japanese Language School did not turn up for classes. Newsmen called to find out what had happened. Said a stoical Japanese woman: "So sorry. FBI have the principal."

Unhappy too were Nisei, the 79,642 native-born citizens of the U.S. who are descendants of Japanese. Said a young Nisei with yellow skin, slant eyes, and a college education: "Over there I'd be a coolie. Over here...I have enough money to own a car, I can talk to any man. Over here, by God, we believe enough in what we have to fight Japan." But panic was in his heart. Would other U.S. citizens know the difference?

Not all of them would. At Ann Arbor, Mich., a young Filipino marched into a police station, asked politely: "Now can I shoot the first Japanese I see?" In Nashville, Tennessee's Department of Conservation put in a requisition for 6,000,000 licenses to hunt Japs at a fee of $2 each. The purchasing department vetoed the requisition, with the note: "Open season on 'Japs'--no license required."

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