Despite unqualified assertions in the Boston Globe Sunday morning that Ryozo Asano '12, president of the Harvard Club of Japan, has been arrested as his country's second-ranking war criminal, little substantiation could be found yesterday that he has actually been taken into custody.

As a matter of fact, the United Press reports that the noted industrialist and suspected fascist organizer was attacked by strikers at his steel plant recently, and was committed to a hospital. Thus it is obvious that, whether or not he is awaiting trial, he is definitely out of prison at the moment, and there is no proof that he was ever actually apprehended.

Called at his Milwaukee office, Nathan Pereles '04, secretary of the Associated Harvard Clubs, stated that the reported arrest was a "complete surprise" to him, and that he didn't know what action, if any, could or would be taken by the AHC in the case. According to Pereles, Asano has been president of the club since 1936.

Asano, apparently a "joiner" in college (he was a member of Hasty Pudding, Phoenix, Stylus, the Kalumet Club, the OK Society, and the Western Club, among others), rose from a job as a private secretary to a position at the head of the Tsurmi Steel and Shipbuilding Company. He counts banking, trading, water power developing, and the motion picture industry among his other occupations.

The rumors and counter-rumors originated with a letter by Wesley A. Dunn '45, published in the current Alumni Bulletin. Dunn wrote his family the details of the first post-war meeting of the Harvard Club of Japan held in November, and stated that Asano was to be arrested

in two weeks.

According to Dunn, influential Japanese interceded on Asano's behalf with high-ranking American officers present at the original dinner, which was sponsored by the industrialist and Lieutenant Ralph T. Lamberson, MBA '42, a member of the Apprehension Division of MacArthur's War Crimes Commission.

The United Press was unable to find out from Tokyo yesterday whether or not he had been incarcerated, and if he was cleared of the charges or is yet to be tried. However, in spite of Dunn's prediction of arrest within two weeks, he was clearly at large on December 29, when he spoke at the Christmas meeting of the club.

An Internationalist?

Asano pictures himself as an internationalist in his autobiography printed in the 1912 twenty-fifth anniversary report. As a result of his Harvard training, he has "been enabled to look upon life from an international point of view...no nation may live apart from other nations." Now that "the boundaries of the community in which we live have been extended to embrace the whole world," we must learn to live together. That is the dangerous thought of the 'Yellow Peril', as my classmates called me," he concluded.

According to Dunn, Lamberson knew about Asano's suspected record as "one of the big industrialists and a member of what is called the young fascist and industrial clique" when he approached him about organizing the meeting. "It was the general opinion," Dunn continues, "that President Asano was trying to make the most of his Harvard education.