French At Saigon Help Australians In Prison Camp

Taranaki Daily News, 21 August 1942, Page 3

French At Saigon Help Australians In Prison Camp

Rec. 6.30 p.m. New York, Aug. 19. How French people are keeping thousands of Australian prisoners alive at Saigon is told by Relman Morin, formerly correspondent of the Associated Press of America in the Far East, in .a dispatch from the Gripsholm, the diplomatic exchange liner. Morin says that French Indo-China is exhibit A in the Far Eastern shqwcase of tragedies. The first white colony ;in the Orient to fall through a combination of bluff and Axis pressure on Vichy, it has become Japan's most important land base. The French stsy there because they cannot get away. French shipping has

been commandeered entirely by the Japanese. The French people are merely existing. They go through the motions of living in the bitter knowledge that their work helps the Japanese conqueror. Yet wherever they can the French are still fighting. That is 90 per cent. of the mass. You can draw a sharp distinction between them and the Government, with its hordes of petty functionaires. In the first three months two Japanese ammunition dumps were blown into the sky by bullets fired at night. The Hanoi-Sai-go.i railway has been wrecked three times. Several thousand Australian prisoners of war are concentrated alone at the Saigon docks. The Japanese have forbidden all communication with them, yet the French are literally keeping them alive, smuggling food, medical supplies and tobacco through the fences at night.