CONDITIONS IN JAPAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 November 1943, Page 3

CONDITIONS IN JAPAN

SHORTAGE OF HIGH GRADE PETROL AND LUBRICATING OIL. INTERNEES IN GRAVE ’ DANGER OF STARVATION. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, November 4. “Informed economists say that Japan has acquired almost all the raw materials she needs for the war effort, but that her big weakness is a shortage of high-octane petrol and high-quality lubricating oil,” said Russell Brines, Associated Press correspondent who has reached Port Elizabeth on a repatriation ship from Japan. “They believe a breakdown of virtually-irreplaceable machinery in vital factories may be under way or will come soon. One of the major pre-war bottlenecks in Japan was machine tools.” Mr Brines stated that reliable persons aboard the Gripsholm said that on Hong Hong Island, with shipping badly disrupted and valuable supplies disappearing rapidly, more than 1,000,000 Chinese and foreigners, including 3000 British civilian internees, were near starvation.

Unless Red Cross supplies arrived promptly there would be a heavy death-toll among the internees at Camp Stanley this winter. The repatriates said that the Camp Stanley internees survived last winter only through the arrival of the Red Cross foodstuffs which were sent during the first repatriation voyage of the Gripsholm.

Since the exhaustion of these supplies last April most of the internees have been living on two bowls of rice a day, covered with thin soup. The average loss of weight of the internees was between 251 b. and 401 b.