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government, after the withdrawal of the British, became useless: the Japanese issued a new rupee paper note of their own, and compelled the people in the areas occupied by them to accept it. In Kokang the only money now acceptable was silver rupees. We had brought some in with us, and further substantial sums were dropped to us by air: it created a problem over the border in China, where the currency situation was so desperate. Our rupees were used to pay for any services or supplies we received from the local population, and they doubtless quickly found their way to the border, where a heavy demand for silver existed owing to the continuous fall in value of the Chinese currency and where, consequently, a rupee would fetch over a hundred dollars. Curiously, Chinese half-dollar silver pieces were still current though not common on the Chinese side of the border, perhaps the only district in China where silver coins still existed, as the Chinese government had gone off the silver standard years before, and withdrawn all silver coins; the silver half-dollar was naturally worth far more than the paper dollar.
One headman asked me if I could not rescue his son from China. It was a sordid story, the details of which only reached me by degrees, but it is a story which should be told.
Lopez was the son of a Filipino father and a Burmese mother. He had spent most of his life in Burma, but claimed American citizenship. The Americans, working from the side of India, were anxious to obtain intelligence about conditions in eastern Burma, and so they trained Lopez, gave him a commission, borrowed some Indian wireless operators from the British, obtained for him a Chinese pass, and sent him with a party into Kokang. They sent him very secretly, a precaution which was not unwise in view of the speed at which news travels on the border; but they overlooked the necessity of informing the American officers with the Chinese Expeditionary Force.
Lopez arrived in Kokang in the autumn of 1934, set up his wireless, and began to collect information, a work at which he would have achieved considerable success. I found he had left a very favourable impression on the local population; some of the men who were subsequently to do the most useful work for us had first been engaged by him. The attack on the Myosa upset his arrangements; Lopez knew too much about this, and perhaps spoke indiscreetly; anyhow the Chinese decided to get rid of him. Although he had a Chinese pass, the Chinese went to the American officers attached to the C.E.F., and reported the presence of