MANCHUKUO: Opium to the Rescue

The dirty job of bargaining with Chinese bandits for the lives of British Mrs. Kenneth Pawley and Mr. Charles Corkran, who calls her “Tinko,” fell last week to Captain Kawahito of the Japanese Gendarmery.

Taking along a load of opium, a load of Japanese yen and a load of warm winter clothing, Captain Kawahito set off in command of a platoon, floundered through awful mud to the bandits’ lair—allbecause His Britannic Majesty’s Government refuses to be trifled with.

The trouble was, Captain Kawrahito found out when he reached the bandit camp, that Mrs. Pawley’s kidnappers considered themselves unemployed and wanted steady jobs. As the first condition of ransom they demanded permission to enlist in the new Manchukuo Gendarmery. Second they demanded that the cash part of the ransom be paid in Chinese silver dollars, not in Japanese paper yen.

Squaring his jaw, Captain Kawahito first threatened, then conjured up the joys of smoking opium in warm winter clothes stuffed with Japanese yen. Probably it was the 250 Ib. of opium that turned the trick, though Captain Kawahito also paid over 130,000 yen ($30,000) and strewed winter clothing right & left. Finally the Captain received custody of the two sick, bedraggled, utterly filthy whites. “They thought I was going to die,” gasped Mrs. Pawley. “That was one of the reasons why they let us go.”

Mr. Corkran explained that he and Mrs. Pawley had been out for a horseback ride when bandits swooped upon them. For 44 days they lived in filth & fear less than 40 miles from Mrs. Pawley’s home at Newchang, southern Manchukuo. When brought home last week “Tinko” (Mrs. Pawley) was tucked into a bed at Newchang Mission Hospital where her father, Dr. Phillips, diagnosed her condition as “feverish and fatigued from a severe cold.”

“Were you tortured?” newshawks asked Mr. Corkran.

“Well, I grew a beard of course,” he said, “and sometimes when a bandit passed me he would yank it.”

Japanese residents rewarded Captain Kawahito with a party. Money for theransom, they said, came not from the Japanese Government but from the Seigidan,local Japanese patriotic society.