Enemy's Estimate

Into Yokohama Harbor last week steamed the exchange liner Teia Maru, bringing home some 1,300 Japanese citizens, able & willing to give their Government firsthand reports on how matters stood in the enemy U.S. after nearly two years of war.*

U.S. listeners, monitoring Japanese home broadcasts, found the speeches and newspaper quotations following two main lines: 1) to brace Jap hope, stories of U.S. weakness and disunity; 2 ) to spur the Jap war effort, solemn warnings that vast physical resources make the U.S. an enemy to be feared.

Hard Lines. Tokyo reports bore down heavily on U.S. home-front difficulties, relating that food distribution had been taken over by "gangsters whose experience in the Prohibition days is proving of great value." Takamoto Hosokawa, onetime New York correspondent for the newspaper Asahi, looked hopefully to U.S. political turmoil next year: "In the event Roosevelt is eliminated," said he, "there will be an estrangement in relations with England, and a darkening state will develop internally. . . ."

Said one Michio Ito, late of Los Angeles :

"It is an undeniable fact that the fighting spirit of the enemy people is decisively high compared to what it was at the outbreak of the war. . . . However, the U.S. also has many weak points. . . . The first weak point, I say, is the democratic system. . . . We hear of the emphasis placed on 'freedom of speech,' which is the golden rule of the democratic nation, but public opinion lacks unity. Worse than this, often the people publicly state their disagreements with the strategy concerning the prosecution of the war. . . .

"They have no plan for certain victory. They have no determination that they must carry through this war or that this war must be won; but instead, the desire for luxury is more dominant in their minds. However, as an enemy, we should never underestimate them."

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