[104-10064-10012.pdf — page 14]
ATTACHMENT 4# THE YOMIURI## 4 US Deserters Possibly Left Japan Aboard BaikalThe four deserters from the US aircraft carrier Intrepid who made a dramatic television appearance Monday in Moscow are believed to have left Japan irregularly by the Soviet-liner Baikal which left Yokohama on November 11 for the Far East Soviet port of Nakhodko.YUICHI YOSHIKAWA, secretary-general of the Japan Peace-For-Vietnam Committee (Beheiren), tells a press conference Tuesday that the four deserters of the US warship Intrepid hoped to stay in Japan but the Beheiren could not help them to do so.Sources in the Metropolitan Police Department said Tuesday that the four Americans could have boarded the ship by a special gangway for Soviet Government officials.Japanese watchmen were on guard at another gangway for ordinary passengers when 222 listed passengers, including eight Americans, boarded the liner before it departed Yokohama at 11.50 am, November 11. The watchmen told police that they did not see any person who was not on the passenger list board the ship through the ordinary gangway.It was learned that 17 officials of the Soviet Embassy and trade mission in Tokyo and scores of visitors boarded the Baikal through the special gangway.The police sources said that it was "quite possible" that the Soviet authorities in Tokyo arranged 'the deserters' exit.### Beheiren PledgeYuichi Yoshikawa, secretary-general of the Japan Peace-For-Vietnam Committee (Beheiren), told a press conference Tuesday that the committee could not disclose how the four Americans left because it had promised not to do so.He neither affirmed nor denied the report that the Americans left Japan by the Baikal on November 11. It was the Beheiren 'which announced for the first time the desertion of the four crew members of the Intrepid to pro-test against the Vietnam war, at a press conference held November 13 in Tokyo. Yoshikawa said that the deserters first wanted to live peacefully in Japan and asked the Beheiren 'to find them jobs, in which they could utilize their English proficiency.The Beheiren told them that they could not live in Japan without being "found" by the Japanese police or US military authorities sooner or later, Yoshikawa said.### Lived Like HippiesHiromi Naito, 20, a painter of Tokyo, told The Yomiuri Shimbun that he and his friend, Sansei Yamao, a hippie poet and member of the Beheiren, acted as go-betweens for the deserters and the Beheiren.Naito said he met two of the four deserters Airman Dick D. Bailey, 19, and Airman Mike A. Lindner, 19 at a hippie hangout in Shinjuku around October 20.He said both Americans wore leather jackets and other informal clothing which they said they borrowed from their Japanese hippie friends hanging around the Shinjuku area.Bailey and Lindner and the other two-Airman John M. Barilla, 20, and Airman Apprentice Craig W. Anderson, 20-went around in pairs, Naito said he let Bailey and Lindner stay overnight at his house in Hayamiyacho, Nerima-ku, from October 24 to 25.Not WorriedWhen he first met the deserters, they were practically penniless but appeared quite unconcerned, Naito said.He said the deserters apparently enjoyed hippie life, living on cheap Japanese food, and drink such as udon (noodles) and shochu.He said the four Americans wanted to live in Japan, and if possible in Tokyo. Naito and his friend Yamao decided to ask the help of the Beheiren and delivered the four men to the Beheiren around November 26.Naito said he believed that all the four Americans were not communists and that they had no interest in communist ideology. He said the four must have decided to go to some neutral country via the Soviet Union after they learned that they could not live in Japan.A spokesman for the Justice Ministry said Tuesday that was nothing legally wrong' in the four Americans leaving Japan because the administrative agreement in the Japan-US Security Treaty guarantees US military personnel the right to come, to stay in or leave Japan.He said he understood that the four Americans were technically still enlisted US military personnel. Furthermore, if their exit took place on November 11, it was before US authorities made an official request to the Japanese police to search for them, he added.He also said there were no Japanese laws allowing charges to be preferred against the Beheiren officials and other Japanese people who "protected" the Americans in Japan and helped their departure to the Soviet Union.