Whose Oil?

On the bridge of the 18,000-ton tanker Nissho Mam as she steamed into Tokyo Bay stood Captain Tatsuo Nitta, flashing a gold-toothed smile. He had just completed a three-week voyage from Abadan, bringing to Japan her first petroleum shipment (15,300 long tons of diesel oil and automobile gasoline) from Premier Mossadegh's nationalized oilfields. At a special introductory price averaging 5.35^ a gallon, he had quite a bargain. Waiting to receive Skipper Nitta at the Kawasaki dock was a cluster of Iranian traders.

They kissed the captain on both cheeks, handed him a big basket of flowers and an autographed photo of Mohammed Mossadegh, "in commemoration of the heroic first shipment of petroleum from Iran to Japan."

Twelve miles away in Tokyo's district court, Britain's Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. tried to block the oil sale. At issue: the question whether the oil, legally purchased from the government of Iran, was actually "stolen" from the British in the expropriation. The British lost the first round of a similar case in Italy in March, when a tribunal in Venice refused to confiscate a cargo of Iranian oil.

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