Word came to some other villages in the Pyeng-yang area that the police would visit them on April 27th, to inspect the house-cleaning. The Christians received warning that they must look out for a hard time. Everything was very carefully cleaned, ready for the inspection. The leader of the church sent word to all the people to gather for early worship, so as to be through before the police should come. But the police were there before them, a Japanese in charge, two Korean policemen, two secretaries and two dog killers.
The two leaders of the church were called up by the Japanese, who stepped down and ran his fingers along the floor. "Look at this dust," he said. Ordering the two men to sit down on the floor, he beat them with a flail, over the shoulders.
"Do you beat an old man, seventy years old, this way?" called the older man.
"What is seventy years, you rascal of a Christian?" came the reply.
The police took the names of the Christians from the church roll, and went round the village, picking them out and beating them all, men, women and children. They killed their dogs. The non-Christians were let alone.
On the afternoon of April 4th a cordon of police and gendarmes was suddenly picketed all around the missionary quarter in Pyeng-yang, and officials, police and detectives made an elaborate search of the houses. Some copies of an Independence newspaper, a bit of paper with a statement of the numbers killed at Anju, and a copy of the program of the memorial service were found among the papers of Dr. Moffett's secretary, and two copies of a mimeographed notice in Korean, thin paper rolled up into a thin ball and thrown away, were found in an outhouse. The secretary was arrested, bound, beaten and hauled off. Other Koreans found on the premises were treated in similar fashion. One man was knocked down, beaten and kicked on the head several times.
Dr. Moffett and the Rev. E.M. Mowry, another American Presbyterian missionary from Mansfield, Ohio, were ordered to the police office that evening, and cross-examined. Dr. Moffett convinced the authorities that he knew nothing of the independence movement and had taken no part in it (he felt bound, as a missionary, not to take part in political affairs), but Mr. Mowry was detained on the charge of sheltering Korean agitators.
Mr. Mowry had allowed five Korean students wanted by the police to remain in his house for two days early in March. Some of them were his students and one was his former secretary; Mr. Mowry was a teacher at the Union Christian College, and principal of both the boys' and girls' grammar schools at Pyeng-yang. Mr. Mowry declared that Koreans often slept at his house, and he had no knowledge that the police were trying to arrest these lads.
The missionary was kept in jail for ten days. His friends were told that he would probably be sent to Seoul for trial Then he was suddenly brought before the Pyeng-yang court, no time being given for him to obtain counsel, and was sentenced to six months' penal servitude. He was led away wearing the prisoners' cap, a wicker basket, placed over the head and face.
An appeal was at once entered, and eventually the conviction was quashed, and a new trial ordered.