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Yonai. Smack next to the Prime Minister of Japan on such dress-shirt occasions as the formal opening of Parliament, sit the Minister of the Navy and the Minister of War. Other Cabinet officers form no more than a decorative background of gold lace. Since last February Japan's Navy Minister has been Admiral Mitsuniasa Yonai, or more formally Yoniuchi—a descendant of the samurai, member of the blue-blooded Satsuma clan and grandson of the extremely wealthy Baron Kentaro Okuma, developer of the South Manchuria Railway.
A giant for a Japanese, Admiral Yonai stands 5 ft. 10 in his big-toed socks and is filling his first big political post. All his life a sea officer, shrewd enough to avoid political squabbles, 57-year-old Mitsumasa Yonai received the flag of a Taisho or full admiral only last December, though he had been a Chui or sublieutenant under the great Togo at the Battle of Tsushima Strait. Affable with junior officers he is extremely popular in the service. More important for the present war, there is probably no Japanese flag officer who knows more about China and the China coast. Admiral Yonai drinks, but sparingly, even at the Gargantuan drinking bouts for which Japan is famous. His chief hobby is calligraphy; drawing intricate Chinese characters on rice paper with a camel's hair brush, a sport that requires great steadiness of hand. His fine Japanese hand had its work cut out fortnight ago when Emperor Hirohito called him in and handed him the problem of Shanghai
Mayor Yui. The potent figure of Chiang Kai-shek had last week not yet appeared directly on the Shanghai front Chinese commander at Shanghai was a little known war lord named Chang Chi-chung. More important politically was the mayor of greater (Chinese) Shanghai, Yu Hung-chun who prefers to Americanize his name to Mr. O. K. Yui. Nothing so simple as a direct municipal election is possible in the China of Chiang Kaishek. Shanghai's mayoralty with the administration of a budget of $3,000,000—one of the most important jobs in the East—is a direct appointment from Generalissimo Chiang. For five years Shanghai's mayor was suave General Wu Te-chen who became a national hero in the Japanese invasion of 1032 Last March Generalissimo Chiang decided that Mayor Wu might be getting to be too much of a hero, kicked him upstairs to the difficult post of Governor ot Kwangtung and gave this rich job to O. K. Yui, a toothy highly-Americanized graduate of St. John's University, Shanghai who had been Secretary General and busiest executive of Shanghai since 1930.
Pride of O. K. Yui was the city's $8,000,000 Civic Centre, a group of white marble buildings as imposing as anything in the International Settlement. Last week they were shelled to pieces by the guns of art-loving Admiral Yonai. Nearly half of Mayor Yui's great city was in flames and many thousands of his citizens were dead, but O. K. Yui has a chance of becoming a far greater hero than Mayor Wu ever was.