NOT FIT FOR 50 YEARS

Southland Times, Issue 25797, 8 October 1945, Page 4

NOT FIT FOR 50 YEARS

JAPAN AND WORLD AFFAIRS

(P.A.) AUCKLAND, October 7. “It is my considered opinion that Japan is not fit for, and must not be allowed to have any voice whatever in world affairs for at least the next 50 years,” said Lieutenant-Colonel J. W. Craven, medical superintendent of the Auckland Hospital, who returned to Auckland by flying boat on Saturday. Lieutenant-Colonel Craven was in command of the Alexander military hospital at Singapore when the Japanese captured the city in 1941, and until May 1944 he was in command of the prisoner of war hospital camp jit Changi. He had to relinquish that post for health reasons, and from, then until his release he lived as an ordinary prisoner in the overcrowded Krangi camp near the Johore causeway. “The camp at Krangi was grossly overcrowded,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Craven,' “for the Japanese took half it away to house working parties, and other prisoners had to find accommodation in the portion that was left. The camp at one time held 2800, and men were forced to sleep beneath the huts for shelter.

“I think we ran into some good Japanese, but the trouble was that they were completely undependable,” he continued. “For a period one would get the impression that things were going comparatively smoothly and that the Japanese were being reasonable; then suddenly, usually over some very minor matter, they would swing to the opposite extreme and things would become very difficult. It seems that when the Japanese has come to a decision to take certain action or to inflict some punishment, even if later circumstances prove him to be completely wrong in his first assumption, he refuses to change his mind and remit the punishment.” “All the Japanese seemed to have an innate streak of cruelty and were very ill balanced in this respect,-he continued. Their early training and peculiar philosophy were probably to a great extent responsible for this, and therefore the entire nation was in great need of an extensive period of training. Japanese of all ages required to be re-educated, and the process would probably have to be spread over several generations. Until that process was complete, Japan as a people should not be permitted to rearm or to have any voice in world affairs. Japanese medical men with whom he came into contact were highly untrained and inefficient, Lieutenant-Colonel, Craven concluded. They offered no help to the prisoners.