JAPANESE BOASTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 163, 13 July 1942, Page 4

JAPANESE BOASTS

PRODUCTION OP RUBBER ' (0.C.) WELLINGTON, this day. Though Japanese publicity is continuously boasting about the progress which is made by the Japanese in the Netherlands Indies in reestablishing the different industries, railways, harbours and oil refineries, Tokyo or Batavia radio from time to time give themselves away with messages which clearly show that reconstruction and organisation are not what they want the world to believe. An example is the recent statement by Tokyo that rubber is already being produced in Sumatra. The fact that after four months the Japanese are already making some rubber in Sumatra is nothing to boast about, as tapping a rubber tree and making sheets out of the raw rubber, ready for export, is a rather simple matter. In Sumatra rubber was not only produced by numerous large Dutch rubber estates with modern factories out also by hundreds of thousands 2?,_!?5*!L ves ' who possessed a few rubber trees and a very «h2Ft» outfit to make lumps or th< v ma rket. The fact Tokyo boasts after four months occupation of Sumatra , already been °£ y shows5 hows the effecscorched earth bff also that the Japanese «*J"leation of reconstruction is not marvellous as they* would, like the world to believe.