Toshio & Thompson

ARMY & NAVY

A Federal grand jury in Los Angeles last week furnished the U. S. Press with its first convincing Spy Story in many a moon. In spite of the fact that the spy's accomplice was not a beautiful girl but, according to U. S. Attorney Peirson Hall of Los Angeles, a slender, fresh-faced young man, the yarn of the disloyal ex-sailor and the Japanese naval officer made bang-up copy.

Harry Thomas Thompson, 28, a Maryland farm boy who served one cruise with the Navy, was in the summer of 1934 jobless and spending his time in a small, disreputable park near the San Pedro, Calif, waterfront. There one hot August evening he made the acquaintance of plump, soft-spoken Toshio Miyazaki, who had learned excellent English as an exchange student at Stanford University, had later been assigned to his country's Intelligence Service. Toshio Miyazaki offered to put Harry Thomas Thompson in the way of earning some money. The job, at $500 per month, plus expenses and bonuses, was to spy on the U. S. Navy, from which Thompson had been discharged.

Harry Thompson bought himself a Navy yeoman's uniform, went to work. Posing as a visitor from another crew, he would board warships at the San Pedro and San Diego bases. With the disarming air of an ambitious country boy he would then ask eager questions about gunnery data, technical innovations, maneuvers. He frequently managed to slip off by himself, filch code books, signal books, photographs, blueprints, plans, maps, models. He made friends easily, often took gunners and technicians out on parties. What he learned found its way to Toshio Miyazaki, who returned regular payments from his large account in San Francisco's Yokohama Specie Bank.

A Texas youth named Willard James Turntine was Spy Thompson's roommate. One day Thompson fondly confided his whole story to the boy. Patriotic Willard Turntine thereupon unburdened himself to Navy Intelligence officers, fled back to Texas. The officers trailed Thompson to many a meeting with Miyazaki, arrested him four months ago on a charge of masquerading in Navy uniform. Meantime Toshio Miyazaki had left the country.

Scheduled for trial for betraying military secrets this week, Harry Thompson faced a possible 20-year prison sentence instead of the death which might be his if the nation were at war. As for Toshio Miyazaki, the State Department merely announced that it had served no representations on Japan. Playing up to their part in the elaborate diplomatic game which calls for blank official ignorance about the whole business of spies and spying, Imperial Navy officials in Tokyo professed themselves eager to help the U. S. if they could, readily admitted that their roster included a Lieutenant Commander Toshio Miyazaki who was "in America a few years ago as an attache of the Japanese Embassy" and was currently serving as instructor at Tokyo's Naval College. "But that this Miyazaki is the person named in the indictment is problematical," they blandly declared, "since Toshio Miyazaki is a common Japanese name."

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