Grand Maneuvers

Japan winds up this week her Grand Naval Maneuvers and sea exercises of all sorts which have been going on since July 20. In the first phase, "fleet training.'' nobody was killed. In the second phase, "target practice," seven sailors met Death in a turret fire aboard the cruiser Ashigara. Then the fleet disappeared for five weeks of Grand Maneuvers in North Pacific waters.

"Don't worry," a Japanese naval official privately told one U. S. correspondent. "The appropriation for our Grand Maneuvers was only 6,270,000 yen [$1,800,000]--not nearly enough to buy fuel for a cruise to anywhere near your waters."

Directing the maneuvers on shore was His Imperial Highness Admiral Prince Hiroyasu Fushimi, distant cousin of the Emperor. One day last week it was rumored that H. I. H. had slipped away to sea to take personal command of the last phase. Two days later the tail of a typhoon zigzagged across Japan, leaving 300 dead and more than $9,000,000 of damage, flailing a Japanese flotilla maneuvering off the east coast of Honshu, the Empire's largest island. The furious spiral of wind and water swept 27 officers & men off the destroyer Yugiri, 24 off the destroyer Hatsuyuki and one off the broad deck of the aircraft carrier Hosho. All were lost. Tersely adding up, Japan's Navy Office swelled the list with a final Japanese sailor who "was killed" aboard the destroyer Mutsuki last week, bringing to 60 deaths the price of this year's naval games.

Japanese newsorgans, barred from headlining Grand Maneuvers, last week gave the Baer-Louis fight the biggest play ever received by a U. S. prizefight in Japan, emphasized with satisfaction that the man who won is colored.

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