APPALLING SQUALOR

Evening Star, Issue 25003, 23 October 1943, Page 4

APPALLING SQUALOR

JAPANESE BIVOUACS CONDITIONS ON VELLA LAVELLA (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service.). (Rec. 8 a.m.) PACIFIC BASE, October 7. The squalor of the Japanese bivouac areas deserted during the enemy retreat before the New Zealanders on Vella Lavella had to be seen to be believed. Even camps used for • several weeks showed a complete lack. of consideration for hygiene and an apparent imperviousness of the Nipponese nasal organism to the most vile stench of rotting copra and foodstuffs. Piles of used coconuts, boxes of sodden rice, oatmeal, and plums, open tins of fish, and half-gnawed lengths of sugar cane lay strewn among dirty, discarded clothing, boots, and equipment. A peculiar habit of the Japanese is their cutting of coconuts along the length of the fruit. Seemingly they spirt the fruit with a heavy knife, sacrificing the milk, and eating only the pith. The New Zealanders, on the contrary, make holes in the coconut for the sake of the milk, and leave the pith. The Japanese left strings of bananas, boxes of rice, tins of salmon, piles of rifle ammunition and torch and radio batteries, chopsticks, pannikins, woven mate, and in one camp block and tackle. In the more permanent sites they had built light sapling frames at the base of trees, covering them for living quarters with dried palms to keep out the rain. There was no sign of tents.

It was noticeable that, though the first enemy camps entered by the New Zealanders had been abandoned without regard for the amount of the rations left behind, those they found towards the end of the campaign had fewer and fewer discarded goods. In the last few days only felled coconuts told the tale of the enemy occupation. The pith of the fruit had been all that the Japanese had had to subsist on.