SOIL AND HEALTH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 431, 26 September 1947, Page 17

SOIL AND HEALTH

Sir,-After reading the article by Sir Stanton Hicks with the introductory rematk that "We scientists, if we are worthy of the name, must not confuse the public," I am confused by his further remark about the "Present Japanese low record for malnutrition, and for infant mortality." I have recently returned from Japan, . where, for just under a year, my job ~was the engaging, training and supervising of Japanese labour-male and female-all ages, for the tasks connected with running a forces club (cleaning, cooking, gardening, serving, etc.). Those Japanese, and there were hundreds, tested in the pathological laboratory, were 99 per cent. diseased-the pathologist stated that further tests could easily show 100 per cent. diseased. Most of them suffered from boils

on face, neck, arms, legs or body; many had sore eyes; and many had been born. with V.D. All my staff were underfed, hungry, and listless. I learnt to distin- _ guish wouldn’t work from couldn’t work, and these couldn’t work. It says much | for their faith or fear that they showed such endurance when fighting. In. the whole of the BCOF area there were evidences of hunger and malnutrition. A letter received from a club colleague last week tells of the death of bein parents of a family of six girls and boys’ we employed. "Both died . of acute aenemia. and malnutrition." So H. M. Helm amazes me with his statement that white women in Japanese concentration camps were able to do coolie work on a diet|of rice. This creates a false impression. The word forced should be substituted for able. True, men and womien did coolie work -I met two survivors of the team employed on the Burma railway, who told me that the record was one man dead for every sleeper laid until rations were

increased.

P.

ZIESLER

(Whenuapai). |