John Allen Kuchar Zegrus (ジョン・アレン・カッチャー・ジーグラス,Jon Aren Kacchā Jīgurasu) is the reported name of a man detained in 1960 inJapan for alleged document fabrication. He was dubbed the "Mystery Man" (ミステリー・マン,Misuterī Man) by Japanese news at the time, and became a prototype for someurban legends.
In October 1959, a man recorded as John Allen Kuchar Zegrus, 36, entered Japan with his Korean wife. Three months later, he was arrested by theTokyo Metropolitan Police, suspected ofidentity fraud. He tried to cash a 200,000-yen cheque and a $140 (around 50,400 yen at the time)traveller's cheque at the Japanese office ofChase Manhattan Bank, and 100,000 yen at the Japanese office ofBank of Korea.
The case was investigated by Atsuyuki Sassa of theTokyo Metropolitan Police Department Public Security Bureau (TMPD Public Security Bureau), who would later write about Zegrus in his memoirs. Although his passport contained the stamps of Japanese embassies in differentEast Asian countries, the passport was determined to be counterfeit. Moreover, a visa was issued by the Japanese embassy inTaipei (now reorganized as theJapan–Taiwan Exchange Association).[1]
According to the records, Zegrus said he was "born in the US, moved to theUK throughCzechoslovakia andGermany, and attended high school there. DuringWorld War II, he was a pilot of theRoyal Air Force, and was once captured by the Germans. After the war, he lived inLatin America. Later, he became a spy for the Americans inSouth Korea, served as a pilot inThailand andVietnam, and after that, he worked for theUnited Arab Republic. He arrived in Japan for a secret mission, which included recruiting Japanese military volunteers for the United Arab Republic." Eventually, after contacting the mentioned countries, it was ruled that the information was not based on any facts, and the seals in his pseudo-passport were proven to be fabricated.[1]
On 10 August 1960,Tokyo District Court reviewed the case and sentenced Zegrus to one year in prison. After the announcement, he tried to commit suicide by cutting his veins with a piece of glass secretly brought by him to the court.[2][3]
After his release, Zegrus was deported from Japan toHong Kong, from where he was recorded to enter the region.[citation needed] His wife was deported to South Korea.
In the August 15, 1960 issue ofThe Province, a Canadian newspaper, the story was reported with some alterations. In an article titled "Man with his own country", the newspaper claimed that John Allen Kuchar Zegrus was "a naturalized Ethiopian and an intelligence agent forColonel Nasser", and carried a passport "issued at Tamanrasset, the capital of Taured south of theSahara". Taured is likelyTuareg misspelled, andTamanrasset is an actual province in Algeria. A text in "Taured language" written with Latin characters was also cited by the newspaper. Earlier on 29 July 1960, the story in this form was mentioned in the BritishHouse of Commons, when it was cited byRobert Mathew as an argument that "passports are not very good security checks".[4][5]
The case was once again mentioned in the books byJacques Bergier. According to his version of the story, a person from Taured, a country in Eastern Africa which "stretched fromMauritania toSudan and included a large part ofAlgeria", was arrested in 1954 in Japan during a passport check. He was placed in a psychiatric hospital, where it was revealed that he came to "buy arms for the trueArab Legion". In 1981, the story was mentioned in a book,The Directory of Possibilities, byColin Wilson andJohn Grant, with Tuareg misspelled again as Taured.
Finally, a story featured on various Japanese websites dedicated to urban legends and occult stories tells that a "man from another dimension" arrived atHaneda Airport in 1954. He possessed a passport from the fictional country "Taured". When asked to point out his home nation on a map, he pointed toAndorra. He was placed in a hotel with two guards for investigation, but was nowhere to be found the following morning.[6]
