The municipal authorities were made responsible to the Japanese military governor, who was clever enough to leave the entire American municipal administration unaltered, even down to the smallest detail. Even the local police remained in office. The whole civil life went on as before, and only the machine-guns in front of the Japanese guard-houses situated at the various centers of traffic showed who was now ruler in the land. All the officials and the whole city administration were bound by a marvelously clever and effective system.
In the proclamations issued by the Japanese military governor the city was threatened, should the slightest sign of resistance occur, with acts of vengeance that positively took one's breath away. Three Japanese cruisers, with their guns constantly loaded and manned and aimed directly at the two cities, lay between Oakland and San Francisco. They had orders to show no mercy and to commence a bombardment at the first sign of trouble. It did not seem to have occurred to any one that although the bombardment of a town like San Francisco by a few dozen guns might indeed have a bad moral effect, it would nevertheless be impossible to do much harm. But the Japanese had other trump cards up their sleeves. The military governor declared that the moment they were compelled to use the guns, he would cut off all the available supply of water and light, by which means all resistance would be broken down within twenty-four hours. For this reason all the gas-works and electric plants were transformed into little forts and protected by cannon and machine-guns. Tens of thousands might try, in vain, to take them by storm; the city would remain wrapped in darkness, except, as the Japanese general remarked with a polite smile to the Mayor of San Francisco, for the bright light of bursting shells.
In the same way the municipal waterworks in San Francisco and all the other towns occupied by the Japanese were insured against attack. Not one drop of water would the town receive, and what that meant could be best explained to the Mayor by his wife. And thus, in spite of their often ridiculously small numbers, the Japanese troops were safe from surprise, for the awful punishment meted out to the town of Stockton, where a bold and quickly organized band of citizens destroyed the Japanese garrison, consisting only of a single company, was not likely to be disregarded. The entire population of the Pacific Coast was forced to submit quietly, though boiling with rage, while at the same time all listened eagerly for the report of cannon from the American army in the east. But was there such a thing as an American army? Was there any sense in hoping when months must pass before an American army could take the field?
The deception of the Evening Standard by means of the fatal telegram was preceded by an instructive episode. Indeed, it might well be asked whether anything that happened in this terrible time could not be traced back pretty far. In order that the news of the naval maneuvers in the Evening Standard should receive sufficient attention on the critical day, this paper and consequently the inhabitants of San Francisco had for some months past been taught to expect over the signature "Our Naval Correspondent," amazingly correct accounts of the movements of the American fleet and all matters pertaining to the navy.
Mr. Alfred Stephenson had hard work to keep his head above water as editor of the Los Angeles Advertiser at Los Angeles. The struggle for existence gave him considerable cause for worry, and this was due to the fact that Mrs. Olinda Stephenson wished to cut a figure in society, a figure that was not at all compatible with her husband's income. Mr. Stephenson was therefore often called upon to battle with temptation, but for a long time he successfully withstood all offers the acceptance of which would have lowered him in his own estimation. The consequence was that financial discussion had become chronic in the Stephenson household, and, like a Minister of Finance, he was compelled to develop considerable energy in order to diminish the financial demands of the opposition or render them void by having recourse to passive resistance. This constant worry gradually exhausted Mr. Stephenson, however, and the check-book, which, to save his face, he always carried with him, was nothing more than a piece of useless bluff.
He could therefore scarcely be blamed for eagerly seizing the opportunity offered him one evening at a bar in Los Angeles, when a stranger agreed to furnish him regularly with news from the Navy Department for the Evening Standard. The affair had, of course, to be conducted with the greatest secrecy. The stranger told Stephenson that a clerk in the Navy Department was willing to send him such news for two hundred dollars per annum. The result was astonishing. The articles signed "Our Naval Correspondent" soon attracted wide attention, and the large fees received from San Francisco quite covered the deficits in the Stephenson household. Mrs. Olinda was soon rolling in money and the tiresome financial discussions came to a speedy end. From that time on Stephenson regularly received secret communications, which were mailed at Pasadena, and as to the origin of which he himself remained in complete ignorance. But these same messages enabled the Evening Standard in a brief space of time to establish a national reputation for its naval news, which was at no time officially contradicted.
The matter did not, of course, pass unnoticed in Washington, for it soon became evident that secret dispatches were being misappropriated. Vigorous efforts were made to discover the guilty person in the Navy Department, but they all proved vain for the following reason: Among the wireless stations used for maintaining constant communication between the Navy Department at Washington and the various naval ports and naval stations, and the fleet itself when at sea, was the large station on Wilson's Peak near the observatory, whose shining tin-roof can be seen plainly from Los Angeles when the sun strikes it. All messages arriving there for transmission to San Diego and Mare Island could be readily intercepted by the wireless apparatus attached inconspicuously to the huge wind-wheel on an orange plantation between Pasadena and Los Angeles. The uninitiated would have concluded that the wires had something to do with a lightning-rod. The Japanese proprietor of the plantation had simply to read the messages from the Morse key of his apparatus and forward what he considered advisable to Mr. Stephenson by mail. A few hours later the Evening Standard was in a position to make a scoop with the dispatches of its infallible naval correspondent.
Thus Stephenson, without having the slightest suspicion of it, formed a wheel in the great chain which prepared the way for the enemy, and since the Evening Standard had earned a reputation for publishing absolutely reliable news in this field, no one for a moment doubted the announcement of Admiral Perry's attack, although this was the first spurious message which Stephenson had furnished to his paper.