Mystery At Sea: The Case of the Disappearing Playboy

"New York Daily News," February 1, 1998, via Newspapers.com

With most missing-persons cases, it’s fairly easy to surmise that the person most likely vanished for one of four reasons: voluntary exit, foul play, accident, or suicide. What makes the following disappearance unusual is that it contains a number of confusing, contradictory clues which suggest that any of those four categories is possible. In short, not only do we not know what happened to Hisashi Fujimura, it is impossible to say how he disappeared.

Fuijmura was a high-living playboy, of the type that seems somehow quaintly out-of-date these days.  His two favorite pastimes were gambling for very high stakes and beautiful women, and as head of the Ashai Corporation, one of America’s largest silk importing houses, he had more than enough money to indulge such expensive pastimes.  (His wife--a reclusive woman who spoke little English--was reportedly unaware of his extracurricular activities.)  The Japanese-born businessman had lived in the United States since 1921.  He owned a 50-acre estate in Connecticut, where his wife and four children lived, as well as another mansion in Rye, New York, and an apartment in New York City.  He was a charming, suave, outgoing man who seems to have been generally well-liked.

On August 8, 1931, the 38-year-old Fujimura set out on a six-day pleasure cruise aboard the Red Star liner Belgenland.  Accompanying him was his seven-year-old daughter, Toshika, and a pretty young blonde named Mary Reissner, who had been, to put it discreetly, Fujimura’s close companion for the past year.  (Reissner--who was a showgirl before becoming Fujimura’s “protegee”--was listed on the ship’s registry as “Miss Dale, governess,” a cover story that apparently fooled no one.)

This cruise was prefaced by a decidedly ominous note.  The day before he set sail, Fujimura paid a call on a friend, a plastic surgeon named Joseph Saftan.  Fujimura commented, “You know, Doctor, I fear I may never come back from this trip.”  After Saftan sputtered some words of disbelief, the silk merchant replied, “I mean it.  I owe quite a lot of money to some gamblers, and I have learned that they are going to follow me aboard the Belgenland.”  Reissner later stated that when they went aboard the ship, Fujimura begged her not to let him out of her sight, “because there was a certain man aboard.”  (If he truly felt himself to be in such danger, it is a mystery why he did not cancel the voyage and make himself as invisible as possible.)

Aboard the ship, Fujimura and his daughter occupied stateroom No. 62, while Reissner stayed in No. 60, which connected with 62.  There are conflicting reports of how Fujimura and his “governess” got on during the cruise.  As far as most of the other passengers could tell, the pair seemed happy together.  However, an artist named Jan Ribas, who occupied the room next to Reissner’s, claimed he frequently overheard them quarreling.

The Belgenland touched briefly at Halifax, then began the journey back to New York.  The trip, to date, had appeared uneventful.  On the night of August 13, there was a large party thrown on the liner.  Fujimura did not attend.  At around 1 a.m., Reissner left his company to join the merrymaking.  The ship’s captain, J.H. Doughty, saw him at about 2:45, standing in a small side corridor leading toward his stateroom.  Doughty heard him talking to someone, but in such low tones that he could not hear what was being said.  He also could not see who Fujimura was speaking to.

The party broke up at 4 a.m.  When Reissner went to her room, she saw that the lights in Fujimura’s stateroom were out, and his door was open.  She assumed he was in bed asleep.

The Belgenland was due to dock in New York at 7:30 or 8 a.m.  At six, a steward, following Fujimura’s earlier request, knocked on his door to awaken him.  He found little Toshika asleep in her bed, but no sign of the girl’s father.  Fujimura’s bed had not been slept in.  Toshika and Mary Reissner both stated that they had no idea where he was.

When the ship arrived at its pier, it was searched, only to find no sign of Fujimura.  Federal agents, as well as the missing man’s attorney, Harry Melick, soon came onboard to join the hunt.  No clue to his whereabouts could be found.  Reissner--who quickly went into hiding in Fujimura’s apartment--continued to insist that Fujimura’s whereabouts were a complete mystery to her.  She denied rumors that there had been a loud commotion in her stateroom on the night he vanished, although she admitted that Fujimura had been “drunk and lonely” during much of the cruise, and he had been displeased that she had attended the party without him.

An interesting possible clue surfaced when it was learned that one of the missing man’s bank accounts had shrunk from $333,414.65 on March 1 of that year to $2.65 on August 8.  It was rumored that Fujimura had paid the missing money to blackmailers, but investigators eventually came to the more boring conclusion that he had merely lost all the cash in gambling.  In any case, his friends and business associates pointed out that such sums meant little to someone of Fujimura’s great wealth.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Fujimura was hit with an additional tragedy.  Her youngest child, a three-year-old girl, died of a heart ailment just before the Belganland returned to New York.  Six days later, Mrs. Fujimura gave birth to her fifth child.

There was no shortage of theories about what had happened to Fujimura.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Aranow believed that Fujimura had been murdered.  He claimed to have information that four men, including two extortionists, had been keeping Fujimura under surveillance for some weeks.  Aranow went on to suggest that the extortionists had boarded the Belgenland at Halifax, and, using forged Department of Justice badges, tried blackmailing Fujimura by threatening to prosecute him under the Mann Act.  When the silk merchant refused to play ball, they tossed him overboard.  However, Aranow could produce no proof for his lurid little tale.

A week after the Belgenland returned to New York, a taxi driver named Thomas Riley told police that a few hours after the liner docked, a woman and a Japanese girl got into his cab, where he drove them to 56th street, where they were met by a man.  He said that the child was Toshika Fujimura, but the woman was not Mary Reissner, and the man was not Hisashi Fujimura.  Riley added that six days later, he saw Hisashi come out of New York’s International House, where he was joined by two men, one of whom was the man who had earlier been with Toshika and the unknown woman.  The trio approached Riley’s cab.  The taxi driver noticed that the two men with Fujimura kept their hands in their pockets, as if they had guns leveled at Hisashi.  Fujimura told Riley that he wanted to be driven to Norwalk.  After the driver said he didn’t want to make such a long journey, the three men walked away.  This strange story was as unsubstantiated as Aranow’s.

On September 8, the Feds officially closed their investigation into Fujimura’s disappearance.  U.S. Attorney George Medalie announced that “The government’s interest was to determine what evidence, if any, existed to support a belief that Mr. Fujimura was the victim of a murder or that any other crime had been committed on the high seas.  A careful survey of all the evidence fails to furnish any such proof.”

On October 5, an expensive wallet stamped with Fujimura’s name was found by a workman in an unoccupied flat in Manhattan.  The wallet, unlike the other items in the room, was not covered in dust.  The most recent occupant of the apartment was one Pearl Anderson, who had moved out six weeks before.  Authorities failed to find Anderson.  Police learned that the wallet had been given by Fujimura’s company at a banquet two years before.  The missing man had never used it--just tossed it aside with the rest of his effects--so no one could say how it wound up in a Manhattan flat.  This initially intriguing clue, like everything else surrounding this case, went nowhere.

In 1938, Hisashi Fujimura was declared legally dead. We'll likely never know if he disappeared as a result of foul play, suicide, an accidental fall over the side of the ship, or simply a desire to start a new life.  Our little mystery ended on a suitably enigmatic note.  On December 3, Fujimura’s wife and children returned to Japan, for good.  Before Mrs. Fujimura left New York, reporters asked her if she had anything to say about her husband’s disappearance.

She did not.