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widely quoted. Now at last,
readers of the articles thought, we know what really is going on in Russia.
It’s a great comfort to think that there’s at least one newspaper left that
gives a balanced, objective, unprejudiced account of things; at least one
journalist left who can be relied on not to lose his head; to give us the
facts, truth, and leave us to form our own conclusions.”
After Gareth’s final visit to the Soviet Union
in 1933, as a result of his famine – genocide expose, he was not allowed to
return. In a letter to a friend Gareth wrote: “Alas! You will be very
amused to hear that the inoffensive little 'Joneski' has achieved the
dignity of being a marked man on the black list of the O.G.P.U. and is
barred from entering the Soviet Union. I hear that there is a long list of
crimes which I have committed under my name in the secret police file in
Moscow and funnily enough espionage is said to be among them… As a matter of
fact Litvinoff [Soviet Foreign Minister] sent a special cable from Moscow to
the Soviet Embassy in London to tell them to make the strongest of
complaints to Mr. Lloyd George about me.”
Unable to return
to the Soviet Union; and aware that Japan was an enigmatic problem, the
Gareth Jones decided to undertake a “Round the World Fact Finding Tour” and
in particular to study Japan’s intentions of colonial expansion in the Far
East. At the end of October, 1934 he left Britain bound first for the USA
and three months later, sailed from San Francisco for Japan via Hawaii.
After six weeks in Japan, interviewing several military and political
leaders, he then toured the Far East enquiring about the political situation
in that area. Historically, he arrived in the Philippines two days after
Roosevelt had given the islands Independence. He also journeyed on to visit
the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, Siam, French Indo-China and Hong Kong
before travelling in China to reach his intended destination of Manchukuo.
Sadly, he never achieved his goal as Chinese bandits captured him in Inner
Mongolia, held him for the ransom sum of 1,000,000 Mexican dollars and after
16 days in captivity, whilst making worldwide front page news, on the eve of
his thirtieth birthday he was murdered by these men, disbanded Chinese
soldiers controlled by the local Japanese Military.
There is no doubt that Gareth Jones was
considered by the Japanese army in Manchukuo as a dangerous man and a
probably at worst, a secret agent. It would not have gone unnoticed that
an article by Gareth’s was published at the time of his kidnapping ordeal
entitled: [Japanese]’“Rape” of Manchuria’. The Japanese feared he would
expose to the world their ambition to build an Empire in the same fearless
manner as he had exposed the man-made famine brought about Stalin’s
Five-Year Plan of Collectivisation and Industrialisation.
Gareth Jones was indeed a man who knew too
much.
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