SNAP INSPECTION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 422, 25 July 1947, Page 19

SNAP INSPECTION

"Time" Correspondent Sums Up N.Z. | in No Time

ITH a half-written cable message to Time sitting in his typewriter and his baggage partly packed for the trip north the next morning, Robert Sherrod, Chief Pacific Correspondent for Time, Life, and Fortune, American magazines; was-busy. But he had time for a short interview with The Ja Listener. His visit to New Zealand from his headquarters in Shanghai, he said, was a very hurried one; it meant about nine appointments a day, the first at breakfast and the last at midnight, but he had been able to tie up most of the loose ends of an eight-days investigation.

There was a two-fold reason for his} ‘visit. First, he wanted to meet somé > of the' New Zealand widows of United States Marines killed on Tarawa in November, 1943; then he was writing a news story on the political and economic situation in New Zealand. In his recently-published book, Tarawa, he has the official list of members of the Second Division, United States Marine Corps, killed in the 76-hours’ battle, and ke has collected from some of the widows in New Zealand material for an article in Life, describing how they are living now. He covered the Tarawa campaign as a war correspondent, landing on the beach with the second wave of troops. "And there is. so much war about yet that I still feel like a war correspondent," he said. "I mean particularly in the Philippines. Starvation, too, is very serious this year in the Far East. Indo-China, Siam and Burma are the only rice-producing ‘ countries, and: the Far East will take many years to rebuild. But the Chinese, situation is the most impossible of all at the moment." We asked Sherrod if events in India were having any ‘effect ‘abroad. i "Hindu-Moslem strife has no repercussions on other countries, as far as I can see," he said, "But one thing in New Zealand that strikes me as curious is the fact that you people still seem to look on Japan as a potential enemy. Americans don’t think her at all dangerous now." Our last question, in the short time Mr. Sherrod could spare, was what he thought about the choice of Fiorello La

Guardia as the second holder of the Wendell Willkie One World Award, "He was an excellent mayor, and he is a man of great political strength, I have always admired him as a left-wing Congressman. The choice is logical and a good one, I should say." Sherrod left next day for Auckland to make a few more inquiries about some of the war widows living there. He is due in Java by August 10.