REVOLT POSSIBLE IN JAPAN

Southland Times, Issue 23379, 10 December 1937, Page 5

REVOLT POSSIBLE IN JAPAN

AMERICAN DOCTOR’S OPINION ARMY VENTURES AS CLOAK FOR ECONOMIC ILLS (Special to The Times) AUCKLAND, December 9. A suggestion that Japan is ripe for revolution, peacable or otherwise, was made by Dr J. S. Bishop, a retired American physician, who arrived at Auckland by the Van Rees from the East While making a short visit to Japan, he said he had obtained the general impression that the economic position of the country was so bad that some kind of radical change at the head of affairs was a distinct possibility. “Her people are poor,” he said, “and her fanners are losing their land. Taxation to meet the country’s increaA i> expenditure is having its effect and I gathered that Japan today is in a dangerous position. “To avoid sudden change the Army Party now in control and running the war in China must have success. If it did not win, and Mr Bishop said he did not think it could be so successful that Japan would not have continual war on its hands, the country would be in a sad state. The people were being primed with thoughts of victory. Censorship was so rigid that anything about reverses or failures never got to the people. When he was in Kobe he saw 10 transports of troops despatched to the sound of patriotic cheers from specially organised parties of school children and adults.

He did not like Japan, he said. Although he minded his own business very strictly he had a feeling of constant surveillance and he was told that within the first hour of his landing he had been watched by Japanese officials. This alone was enough to make him dislike the country and he was very glad to leave. NO FURTHER MEETING OF LEAGUE BODY QUESTIONS ASKED IN HOUSE OF COMMONS (British Official Wireless) RUGBY, December 8. In reply to a question in the House of Commons the Foreign Secretary (Mr R. A. Eden) said that so far as he was aware no government had proposed a further meeting of the League of Nations Far Eastern Advisory Committee. Replying to another question, Mr Eden said that Italy’s recognition of Manchukuo appeared to be inconsistent with the League’s recommendation of September 1933.

Mr Eden stated that the text of China’s protest to Geneva did not appear to call for any action by Britain at Geneva.

Asked about a Japanese allegation that five tons of phosgene gas had been shipped from Britain to China, Captain Euan Wallace, of the Joint Secretariat of the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade, said that no phosgene had been exported from Britain since the beginning of the year except three tons consigned to a dye works in Holland. STRIKE IN JAPANESE IRON MINE CHINESE REFUSE TO WORK SINGAPORE, December 8. Seven hundred Chinese employed in a Japanese-owned iron mine at Johore have refused to work, declaring that the results of their labours are being diverted for the manufacture of munitions for Japan. This mine produces 30,000 tons of ore a month—one-sixth of the Malayan total, which is all Japanese-controlled. It is expected that 5000 Chinese in the other iron mines will also strike.