Kiwis in Japan

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 387, 22 November 1946, Page 11

Kiwis in Japan

NE of the clearest indications that the war is over (whatever the statutory position may be) is provided by the contrast between the old session With the Boys Overseas and the present With the Kiwis in Japan. The Kiwis session has an appeal for the ordinary listener, no matter how little acquainted with a Kiwi. Now that place names can be mentioned as frequently and as emphatically as the name of the favourite in a racing commentary there is no ban on travel talks, and the usual half-hour’s programme consists of a few greetings followed by a trip round Tokio with Private Brown, more greetings till it’s time for tea with a Japanese family and Sergeant Green, more messages and then across to Korea with Corporal Crome. The subject matter of the short talks ‘is well arranged, and the delivery confident. But it is in the greetings and messages home that one notices the full force of the contrast between the new session and the old. Before it was difficult and even unseemly for an outsider to listen in; now one can eavesdrop happily on these breezy valedictions, knowing that the speaker will be back with Mum and Dad and the Girl Friend in a few months’ time. Almost the only hint of the old poignancy I noticed in 2YA’s session last week was a young man’s request to "keep up the letters; they’re the only good things we get here" and several wistful references to shortages of the bottled stuff.