FAMINE FACED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 December 1943, Page 4

FAMINE FACED

JAPANESE PRISON CAMPS. SERIOUS POSITION DISCLOSED. By Russel Brines. Nearly 20,090 Occidental civilians, 6,300 of them Americans, still,remain in internment camps in Japan, China, and the Philippines, and all face dwindling food and other supplies, writes Russell Brines, after over- two years in Japanese internment camps, to the “Christian Science Monitor.” This was disclosed bby a survey of the 1,500 repatriates aboard the exchange liner Gripsholm who came from 28 of the* 33 large and small civilian camps the Japanese are known to bbe maintaining in those countries. The shortages were attributed to the disruption of communications and rising living costs. The situation was said to bbe particularly acute on Hong Kong Island, which is entirely dependent on imported foodstuffs. Repatriates declared that more than 1,000,000 Chinese and foreigners, including 3,000 British civilian internees, are near starvation there. Without sensationalism, these sources expect a famine -this winter in Hong Kong City. In addition to the 6,300 Americans, approximately 13,500 British, Canadians, and Netherlanders remain in camps scattered through Japan, China, and the Philippines. A few hundred still are free because of medical and religious exemptions or special technical employment. About 100 others are free in South Indo-China and 50 others are in confinement in a center near Saigon. Most of the Americans, some 5,000 of them, remain in the Philippines in three major camps. Possibly less than 100 are in Japan, the remainder having been sent to China. The Japanese have thrown a blank wall around internment conditions in Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies. In most camps internees are able to maintain an Occidental subsistence ration only through their own funds for outside purchases to augment Jap-anese-issued rations. Even this is impossible, however, in Hong Kong, and 3,000 British at Camp Stanley there are suffering undernourishment. The repatriates said the Stanley internees survived last winter ( .only through the arrival of Red Cross foodstuffs sent on the first repatriation voyage of the Gripsholm. These supplies arrived only after being transshipped from Japan. “The internees there are all suffering from malnutrition,” one responsible repatriate said: “Many are so weak I am afraid it will be too late for thin if the supplies are held several months in Yokohama warehouses as the last lot was.” Internee officials have attempted to obtain Japanese permission to have I

foodstuffs unloaded this lime during the scheruled stop-over in Hong Kong of the Japanese exchange liner Teia Marti on the homeward journey, but the Japanese gave no assurance. The condition of several thousand British and Canadian war prisoners at Kowloon is unknown, but they also presumably are feeling the pinch.