STUPID LOOTING

Evening Star, Issue 25226, 13 July 1944, Page 6

STUPID LOOTING

JAPS. DEFEATED THEMSELVES

" CO-POVERTY SPHERE "

According to the current issue of ' Business Week' magazine (NewYork) : "A seasoned analyst of international resources and economics who recently returned aboard the s.s. Gripsholm, after an enforced 20 months behind the Japanese lines," said that "Japanese occupation has almost entirely stopped production, transportation, and trade " in the Philippines. 'Business Week' continues: "The Japanese have accomplished only two things in the islands—they have looted thoroughly, then found it impossible, to their dismay, to get production going again . . . For instance, virtually the only interisland commerce now is by prau (a small locally-used boat) . . . "Partly because the Japanese have been incompetent, and partly by deliberate but shortsighted design," the co-prosperity sphere has become for the Filipinos " the co-poverty " sphere. "When the Japanese came to Manila, they blew the safe of each foreign firm, ransacked files, and tumbled out all records including maps and blueprints, either burning or using them to meet the paper shortage. . . . Thus all records are irretrievably lost. . .' .

"Meanwhile the invaders were loading up and taking to Japan almost every movable commodity—all refrigerators, as one instance among hundreds—and almost all Manila's street cars.

" Then the military settled down to run and restore this ravaged economy. . . . They quickly found the job impossible, and called specialists and executives from Japan, who came and found themselves likewise helpless, largely because of the thorough destruction of records. , . , " Attempts to restore plants were virtually a failure. . . . Public utility and such services are working after a fashion, but for almost all else the modern metropolis of Manila has become virtually a medieval handicraft, hand-to-mouth city. " Since the living standard of the Philippines formerly was much above Japan's, and since ' co-prosperity ' implies an equal standard throughout the Japanese Empire, the living standard has been drastically cut. For instance, a Filipino executive making 9,000 pesos yearly is now cut to an equivalent salary for the same job in Japan—-2,400 peso's (and that in the Japanese invasion 'funny not good pesos). Fili-pino-owned business is now practically expropriated. " Farmers, having no incentive to produce, have , discontinued producing beyond _ their own needs. Manila and other cities are virtually on an internment camp subsistence basis. . . .

" The railroad service has been restored with, great difficulty for 75 miles south of the capital, and clanking patched-up locomotives drag small trains back and forth once or twice daily—with frequent interruptions in even this service.

" Meanwhile the Filipinos are virtually solid anti-Japanese, and show friendship for the Americans openly when they can, and secretly when they must, in many effective ways."