For more than a year and a half agents kept a periodic check on King’s movements in an effort to trap him in an act of smuggling or trafficking in narcotics. They had no success until a seemingly unrelated incident occurred in Japan.
On February 9, 1956, Japanese postal inspectors at Yokohama seized a shipment of narcotics which proved to be of special interest to Customs agents in San Francisco and Seattle. While making a routine examination of a package mailed by international air mail, they found 167 grams of heroin and 217 capsules of cocaine hidden in the folds of a pair of woman’s pajamas and slippers. The package was addressed to a Mrs. Hazel Scott in Seattle, Washington. The Customs declaration tag gave the name of the sender as W. M. Scott and listed an address in Yokohama. The addresses were written by typewriter. The narcotics were in a manila envelope bearing the words “For Walker.” The Japanese turned this information over to the U.S. Embassy.
During the years of the Allied Occupation of Japan after World War II, American and Japanese authorities had achieved close cooperation in combatting the traffic in narcotics and other contraband. This cooperation was continued after the signing of the Peace Treaty in 1952 formally ending the occupation.
The United Nations made the control of narcotics traffic one of its important objectives soon after its formation, resulting in a combined effort by many nations to strangle the illicit trade by joint efforts which were unknown in the years prior to the war.
Treasury agents were stationed in Tokyo as liaison officers to work with Japanese authorities on any cases involving American interests. And it was a routine matter for the Japanese police to give Treasury agents the information on the seizure of the package addressed to Mrs. Scott. This information was relayed from the U.S. Embassy to Customs agents in San Francisco.
The agents found there had been a seaman named Walter Scott aboard an American naval vessel in Yokohama at the time the package was sent—but Scott had not mailed a package while his ship was in Yokohama. Obviously whoever had sent the package containing narcotics had used Scott’s name without his knowledge. As for the envelope marked “For Walker,” agents suspected that it was probably intended for a known narcotics dealer named Roosevelt Walker, who first came to the attention of Customs in 1940 when he was arrested in Nogales, Arizona, and was charged with smuggling a quantity of marihuana into the country.
And agents found another interesting fact: Walker was a companion of Robert L. King. King had been in Tokyo at the time the package was mailed, but there apparently was no way to link him with this smuggling effort.
And so the surveillance of King was continued. On July 16, 1956, agents trailed King to the International Airport at San Francisco. He had booked passage on Pan American Flight 831 for Tokyo by way of Honolulu and Manila. King was nattily dressed in a brown business suit and he wore a rakish straw hat as he boarded the plane. The agents watched his plane leave San Francisco at 10 A.M., making no effort to stop him. Honolulu and Tokyo were alerted to the fact that King was aboard the plane and that his movements should be watched.
King was permitted to enter Japan unmolested. He also was allowed to leave Japan for a trip to Hong Kong, where he spent several days shopping before returning to Tokyo.
The return to Tokyo was a mistake for King. For months Japanese police had been trying to trace the typewriter which had written the addresses on the package containing the narcotics. They found that King, at the time the package was mailed, had been living in Yokohama at the Tomo Yei Hotel. They also found that King had rented a typewriter—two days before the parcel was mailed—from a Mr. Ono who ran a shop near the hotel. And then they matched a sample of typing from this machine with the typed address on the package containing narcotics. The comparison left no doubt that this was the machine which had been used by the would-be smuggler.