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postal orderto the visitor / The visitor then took out a bottle of transparent, colourless liquid from his briefcase / The man sprinkled a small amount of the liquid over the postal order and the ledger / Ogawa asked the man if he wished to take the postal order away with him but again the man did not answer clearly / Ogawa then asked him if it was possible to be infected with typhoid from simply touching the postal order and again the man was unsure / Ogawa said, ‘Surely we would have had to lick the postal order, or the customer’s hand to become infected?’ / The man agreed and stood up ready to leave / However, the man, looking around the room at the closed vaults, then asked whether or not the bank had already sent the day’s cash deposits to the Central Bank / The man used the same technical terms used by the bank employees to talk about cash deposits and banking practices and procedures / However, before Ogawa could answer, the man bowed deeply, thanked the manager and left the branch / Ogawa described the man as being in his fifties, of medium build, round faced with a scar on his left cheek and close-cropped hair / He was wearing a uniform with an armband on which were painted the words: ‘Tokyo Epidemic Prevention Centre’ / Second case reported to Special Investigation HQ today by a Mr Kawasumi, acting manager of the Ebara branch of the Yasuda Bank / Kawasumi reported that on 14 October 1947, a man entered the Ebara branch of the Yasuda Bank at 722 Hiratsuka-machi 3-chōme, Shinagawa-ku and announced himself as a Dr Matsui Shigeru, an official from the Epidemic Prevention Unit of the Welfare Ministry / The man said, / came here with Lieutenant Parker in a jeep because a new typhus case has happened in the houses near the market located behind your bank and that because some of the residents of these houses are customers of the bank it is necessary for me to immunize the employees of the bank against infection.’ / However, Kawasumi was suspicious of this Dr Matsui and so he sent an employee to the local Hiratsuka
kōban
to ask the officer on duty whether there had been an outbreak of typhoid in the neighbourhood / The officer was called Iida Ryuzo / Officer Iida said he hadn’t heard of any outbreak but that he would check and then come to the bank / Meanwhile the manager agreed to cooperate with the disinfection / This Dr Matsui said he had to collect his equipment from his jeep and went outside / On his return, the man distributed some kind of medicine to all twenty-three employees of the bank / He told the employees it was a preventativemedicine for typhus control and directed them to drink it / The medicine was given in two doses / The first dose was described as being the colour of diluted soy sauce with an acrid aftertaste / The second medicine was tasteless and is believed to have been water / Each of the employees drank the doses down but suffered no ill effects / At this point Officer Iida arrived and spoke directly with this Dr Matsui / Officer Iida told this man Matsui that he had been out to the neighbourhood to check and found there had been no outbreak of typhoid / This Dr Matsui told Officer Iida that he must have checked the wrong neighbourhood and suggested that he should go back out to check the correct area / Officer Iida then left the bank to check the area again / But the man did not wait for the officer to return and left a few minutes later / However, Kawasumi has given Special Investigation HQ the name-card the man left behind / ‘Matsui Shigeru; medical doctor; Gikan; Yobō Division; Health & Welfare Ministry’ / A doctor named Matsui Shigeru has already been located in Sendai / Detective Tomitsuka (Bucho Keiji) of the First Investigative Division, has been sent to Sendai to interview Dr Matsui / Officer Iida has also been interviewed this afternoon by Special Investigation HQ and has provided a detailed description of the man / Iida described the man as being in his late forties