JAPANESE INVASION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19136, 3 October 1936, Page 8

JAPANESE INVASION

FOREIGN FISHERIES CANADA AND AMERICA I; LA X D EXP LA N A TION VANCOUVER, Sept. 19United States and Canadian fishery interests in the North Pacific have been rudely startled by what appears to he an invasion, in a very big way, of their fishing areas by Japanese. Taking no trouble to hide their intentions. the .Japanese have sent info North American wafers a big experimental fishery ship, equipped with machinery for canning and processing fish on a sufficient scale to show what could ho done with a. completed scheme oil large invest incut. Dr. Siji Kanda. professor at Ihe. Imperial Fisheries School at Hakodate, is in charge of Hie expedition, which left Japan four months ago. It spent, several weeks along the Alaskan coastline, then reached British Columbia, halting to make experimental catches and padding of the famous coastal salmon. To-day the visitors are lying off California, within a. few miles of Los Angeles. They are endeavouring to ascertain tlie extent and variety ol the. fisheries over thousands of miles of this coast. Some of the world’s finest salmon and halibut fisheries exist- along Alaska and British Columbia. Halibut- are deep-sea fish. Salmon are hatched in the United States and Canadian streams; they enter the ocean, disappear for four, to five years, then return as grown fish and re-enter the rivers of their birth. • “DELIGHTED TO COME” Heretofore the fisheries have been right, inside the river-mouth or in adjacent, areas within a. few miles, though often schools of fish are captured 10 or maybe. 20 miles to seaward (but always headed for homo rivers). Arrives now, Dr. Kanda’s ship; anchors four or five miles off Vancouver Island coast-line; puts small fishing boats over tlie side,; makes an experimental catciT; packs 50C0 tins of sockeyes. Alarmed United States and Canadian fishermen, paying visits as friendly as the, circumstances, permit, are received cordially aboard. “Yes, wo are, delighted to come to your shores,” says Dr. Kanda, “We are taking care to remain outside the three-mile limit, but to avoid misunderstandings we would like to inaugurate with you a joint research into all Pacific fisheries, and t-o establish a basis .of negotiations for a, treaty by which Canadian, United States and Japanese rights and interests would all ho determined.

He blandly explained that Russian and Japanese authorities had encountered difficulties in the administration of fisheries in Kamschatka Peninsula, and he seriously proposed that the packers and fishermen of the American shore-line should bring themselves into joint conference with the people running the Asiatic fisheries in Russo-Japanese waters.

The Canadian and American fishermen found themselves somewhat nonplussed for an effective reply, though they realise Hint what Japan is attempting is vastly to extend her fishing territory by wholesale invasion of waters heretofore exclusively Caucasian. Protests have, already been made, to Washington and Ottawa by interests which feel outraged and flabbergasted bvMhis curious turn of events.