NEW ZEALAND OFFICER CONSIDERS JAPAN IS MAKING GOOD RECOVERY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26958, 18 December 1948, Page 8

NEW ZEALAND OFFICER CONSIDERS JAPAN IS MAKING GOOD RECOVERY

PA INVERCARGILL. Dec. 17. “ The most striking impression of post-war Japan is the rapidity of her recovery from the stringencies of war. Evidence of this is everywhere. Shops are filled with merchandise, the people are mostly well dressed and apparently well fed, and the building of shops and homes goes ahead rapidly,” said Lieutenant R. J. Cuthill, who returned to Invercargill this week with the last draft of occupation troops. “A long-term recovery is not so assured. Inflation has made life difficult for the masses and trade with the rest of the world is being reopened slowly,” he said. This was the crux of the recovery problem, and almost every Japanese knew it and looked eagerly towards the day when his products would again be on the world markets. When this day would come nobody seemed to know, but there could be no question of Japan’s ability to do it. The destruction 'of industry by bombing was on a qolossal scale, but to-day every machine or factory that could be put back to work was moving again, and in the great cities the little back-yard factories that played such a big part in Japan’s war-time industrial drive were humming agan. The products of this industrial revival filled the shops. Household and office equipment, cloth and clothing, optical goods, jewellery, glassware, and chinaware were all plentiful. There was almost nothing, from a motor car to a collar stud, which could not be bought. There were shortages, L'eutenant Cuthill said. Rice was rationed, and last winter there was some starvation in the great cities. The lack of leather made shoes hard to get, but the Japanese had a good substitute in the traditional wooden clog. “The rebuilding of bombed towns and cities has been rapid, but the new shops and homes are all comparatively flimsy,” said Lieutenant Cuthill. “ The usual materials, even for two-storeyed construction, are softwood for the frame and mud for the walls, with a light plaster covering. The roof is tiled or shingled.” Japan’s transport systems were hard hit by the war, but they, too, are quickly being restored. Trains are crowded, but they do run to schedule, and they just manage to handle the volume of traffic. Tram and bus services are getting back to normal in the cities.

“The people work hard for long hours by New Zealand standards, but they have no choice. It is doubtful whether the new trade unions have achieved much for their members. Higher wages have been won, but inflation, still going on, has swallowed the increases. Unionism is not general. and with the number of workers exceeding the supply of jobs, sweated labour, and even actual slavery, is still known.

“Japan recovers and wears to-day the appearance of prosperity,” he added, “but there is a vital qualification—the export trade must be rebuilt. Inflation mounts and unemployment figures creep up like new houses. The structure of recovery is jerry-built, and only the freeing of foreign trade can transform it into something permanent.”