Evening star., 1944-08-20

In the meantime, censorship had been
instructed to be on the lookout for let
ters for Sonora de Molinali, Buenos
Aires, and third letter was intercepted
and turned over to the FBI.
This one was written in the name Of
. Colorado Springs woman, another doll
collector. The decoders found that .
Siamese temple doll mentioned was q
United States cruiser. This woman also
WAS customer and occasional CORE.
spondent of the proprietor Of Madison
avenue New York; costume doll shop,
Mrs. Velvalee Dickinson, who has since
become the doll Woman" in the head
lines.
The importance of the letters can
now be told. Information fltertnp
from the island empire showed that.
elated by the success at Pearl Harbor.
the Japanese had plan to take ad-
vantage OF the monsoon season which
would stop offensive and defensive op-
erations on their equatorial fronts. Tho
plan was to insure themselves unin-
terrupted domination OF the Pacific by
invading the Pacific Coast area of the
United States.
Whoever was writing the letters was
informing the Japanese Navy how many
aircraft carriers, cruisers and battle.
ships their invasion task force must be
prepared to meet and how soon they
would have to act to anticipate return
to service OF the warships dsnaged at
Pean Harbor. The writer was betray-
ing one OF the most fertile and prosper
our areas in the world to Oriental rape
and plunder.
The story of Velvalee Dickinson is con-
tanned in the FBI files in the Justice
department. That is the source of the
letters quoted above. This reporter was
allowed to examine the Dickinson dos
sier and allowed, with some reservations
to protect counterespionage, to write it.
So far, on this side of the water, Mrs.
Dickinson is the woman spy of this war.
Although tall, slender and usually
dressed In black, she has little resem-
blance to the magnetic, slinky charmers
who play the role in the movies. She
has none to Mata Hari, the temple
cancer from the Far East, who, during
the last war, could hold audiences in
her thrall with but the twitching Of an
arm or the rippling of muscles under
the surface of her hthesome body-and
obtain the condolences of officers with
even less effort.
Velvalee Dickinson is brunei of so.
Instead of mingling with officers sne
moved in women's club circles promot-
ing that minor art form so appealing
tc many feminine hearts, the costume
coll She sold dolls for as much as $3.50
apiece. She travelled the country at
times, keeping in touch with well-to-do
collectors. She Is well-known in WASH
ington among doll enthusiasts. Just
after America was forced into the war
by the japanese attack, she did most
OF her travelling on the Pacific Coast.
FBI Kept Watch
The FBI kept her under constant sur
veillance, without her being aware of it,
for year and half after the summer
of 1912 hoping to turn up accomplices.
They failed, She was a lone operator
with the possible exception of her hus-
band who died while the investigation
was in progress.
The FBI laboratories in Washington
found that the first letter was typed on
a portable typewriter in her doll shop.
The others were typed on public ma
chimes in cities she had visited on the
West Cnoc& oorh
was located and evidence obtained that
she was in the city at the time the let
ter was written.
The FBI file is full Of minutiae about
her life, but there is little evidence to
answer the question-why did she be.
come spy for the Japanese? She was
born Velvalee Bucher in Sacramento,
Calf, in 1893. Her father was born in
West Virginia, her mother in Ken
tIcky.
She transferred from one California
educational institution to another
Smell Seminary at Berkeley, Sacramento
Junior College, University of Califor-
nia-and finally obtained an A. B. degree
during the last war from Leland STAN
ford University.
Lincoln Steffans termed the Ameri-
can educational system an enormous
hopper pouring out lcw-salaried clerical
help and so it proved in her case. She
became minor bookkeeper and worked
at number Of jobs that were no better.
Studied Japanese
She went to work for a brokerage
house in San Francisco and handled .
number of Japanese accounts, making
frequent trips to the Imperial Valley.
She joined the Japanese American
Society Of San Francisco and began to
study Japanese. But her brain, which
had never mastered English spelling,
could not encompass that complicated
language.
Her first marriage was such a failure
that she refuses to talk about it. Her
second husband, Lee T. Dickinson, a
clerk in the brokerage house, suffered a
breakdown of health in 1887 from which
he never completely recovered.
What made her become a japanese
spy? One FBI man who questioned her
advanced the idea that she was an
introvert, embittered by life, the -frus-
tration OF childlessness-impressed by
her experience with the importance of
having money.
Perhaps it was egotism. The Japa-
nese made something of this college
graduate who was only low-paid