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"Dropped Telephones." Flags unfurled by the mustards over buildings they occupied were still flying as the third dawn broke. Day & night Oriental haggling had proceeded while the Japanese fleet arrived to put Tokyo at the mercy of its guns, and the Army brought more & more troops into the capital at the rasping orders of new Governor Kashii.
The two simple Captains who still led the killers persisted unabashed. What each side asked may never be fully known and absolutely nothing was divulged last week. Negotiators for the Government with the mustards included famed General Sadao Araki and other well-known Japanese Army leaders and militarist statesmen. Because the killers came from a regiment in which the Emperor's younger brother, His Imperial Highness Prince Chichibu, once held the rank of captain, even he was brought into the haggling, apparently with no result. In Army dispatches His Imperial Highness is usually described as "popular."
Not popular but obviously and increasingly effective proved new Tokyo Governor General Kashii. His soldiers let the mustards come & go for eating purposes and even stop in the streets to fraternize and chaff with citizens, but every hour his Army planes wheeled over them, dropping this & that. Sentimental leaflets telling the rebel youths how their mothers and sweethearts were softly weeping floated down. After some of the mustards had evacuated Police Headquarters and moved into the partially completed new Imperial Diet building, "the Army planes dropped telephones." This remarkable maneuver was in no respect explained, but General Kashii somehow or other talked with the mustards' Captains over the "dropped telephones"—so Japanese cables said.
Little by little the 1,000 rebel ranks thinned by desertions singly and in groups. Then came a jolt staggering to Japanese public opinion. Mustards who were still flying their flag were formally "commanded in the name of the Emperor" to surrender. Yet they did not immediately surrender.
At this sacrilege Heaven did not open and no blasting bolts were hurled by the Sun Goddess as truly pious Japanese might have expected. However snow had ceased to fall, the leaden sky was clearing and glorious Mount Fuji with its smoking crater could be half perceived when Captain Teruzo Ando of the mustards drew his pistol and blew his brains out. His colleague, Captain Shiro Nonaka next drew his pistol, but his aim was faulty and he merely wounded himself. Twenty-four hours later, however, he committed harakiri. Nineteen junior officers of the rebels disappeared for the time being. The Government sent motor trucks to gather up their men, who walked out meekly holding their rifles crosswise against their chests. Neither the soldiers who thus surrendered nor the soldiers who accepted their rifles showed by so much as the flicker of an eyebrow or the twitch of a facial muscle their Japanese feelings.